


East O the Sun, West O the Moon

by Hth



Category: due South
Genre: Kid Fic, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-07
Updated: 2009-12-07
Packaged: 2017-10-04 06:07:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 26,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hth/pseuds/Hth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It's about..." He sighs, and I can hear the stress again in his voice. He has my sympathy now, which only adds weight to - whatever I still feel for him. Loyalty, at the very least. "Look, I don't want to go into it over the phone, okay? This is family stuff, and you should be here for it."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Happily Ever After

East O the Sun, West O the Moon  
by Hth

Hotel showers are a rare pleasure these days, I am sorry to say. Ah, but sorry for which element of the statement? That I rarely sleep or shower in a hotel, or that I find the water -- sluicing endless and hot and loud over my body -- pleasurable? That, I could not answer with any certainty. There was a time when I never thought of such "civilized" amenities with anything other than calm dispassion, when I would find myself standing at the window, even in the loveliest and most comfortable of public rooming establishments, watching the play of moon on icy roads, counting the hours until my heavy boot would sink into snow again with a crunch that I could hear and feel, that connected me with the landscape, the land, my homeland.

I was younger then. Hardier, perhaps. And the Yukon was a world back then; I needed it with the intensity that only someone who has never known any other world can summon up. I was also lonelier, and the sounds my own feet made in the snow were sometimes the only auditory evidence I had for weeks, months on end of my own existence.  How could I not have craved the contact, the proof that this uncivilized, unchangeable country felt my touch, knew my tread, answered back to me in animal cries and the noises of frost and snow? She was my only love in those days.

No longer. As I reluctantly slide back the textured, plexiglass door of the shower and step onto the synthetic robin's-egg rug on the tile, I can hear the noise of the television outside the bathroom door. My current love, my unquiet, half-civilized, endlessly changeable Stanley Kowalski. I know that the wind is harsh outside, an aging harpy who thinks that her threatening cry is still seductive, but in this hotel room, all I can hear is the spattering of water on porcelain behind me, the laugh-track dim through wood in front of me.

I lived like this once, too. The noise of appliances, utilities, music, voices, traffic - insatiable, needy sound. The sounds of Chicago never came in response to me, not like a boot on snow. No matter what I did, Chicago remained ravenous, starving, full of want and sadness like a great, hungry Grendel returning night after night, taking more, unsatisfied.

In Chicago, it was the same with me. I wanted so much, and the more I had, the less alone I became...the less it was enough.

With the heavy, white hotel towel around my waist, I open the bathroom door.  He is on his feet, as always, shuffling them in unconscious patterns, his eyes fixed on the screen but, I think, not seeing it. "I left the water running for you," I explain, lest he begin teasing me about wasting valuable natural resources. "The plumbing here is very delicate; I had trouble getting hot water that wasn't too hot."

Now he looks at me with that very same expression, bright-eyed and alert, but not attentive, as though his mind is deeply immersed in something that I remind him of, but not me per se. He has already stripped out of most of his traveling clothes, down to sweatpants and a t-shirt. "Sure, Frase. Thanks."

I can't help frowning at him. Where does he go when he gets that look?  Somewhere else - Chicago? Nowhere else - hibernation? "Stanley."

It snaps him back to the present, and his head jerks up sharply. He shakes it off, a quick shiver through his shoulders and neck, like Dief drying his fur, and the bright, distant look becomes mysterious, deeply intimate, his gaze wrapping in tendrils around me, his smile a conspiracy.

Foolishly, I have not moved fully out of the bathroom. He eases up to me, his intensity backing me up another step or two, and he smiles again, wickedly, and puts his hands up in a defensive boxing pose, takes a few lightning-quick jabs that could connect with my chest, but don't. "Hey, c'mon, Frase. Get outta my way."

My heart is racing from some combination of his distinctive scent and the phantom suggestion of a fight; I am the stage, as are we all, for so much delicate interplay of memory and chemistry. I want to kiss him, but this fierce playfulness makes me shy and awkward. Most of the time, I don't know what to do with Stanley's moods. I doubt I ever did. I hesitate, and smile at him, and his arms comes down across the doorway, fencing me in. "Wastin' valuable water, Fraser," he says - somewhat predictably.

He wants me to take his arm, push it away. I don't know why, or even how I know this, but I do - perhaps because he is my partner, and we respond to each other on those subconscious, physical levels as a matter of survival. His arm is paler than it used to be, and thicker with lines and layers of muscle. We lead hard lives, and he has risen to the challenge better than I dared to hope; he is stronger than before, leaner, more resilient. He moves me not just with mere beauty now when he puts his arms around me, but with pride as well. Arrogantly, I give myself credit for bringing him here, for daring him to have an adventure and to become more than he imagined that he was.

Stanley's eyes become even darker, probe even deeper through me. Shoulder to the doorframe, he twitches his head again, half a shrug, half a chuckle. We are all alone in the world, suddenly; sound doesn't matter, doesn't have any effect on us at all.

Instead of reaching for his arm, I lift my hand to his face, see the surprise in his eyes as my palm strokes down his cheek and my fingers trail through his beard.  It weakens him, and his arm falls away easily for me to step past. "Shave," I tell him.

Not to be defeated entirely, he steals my towel as he slips through the door and shuts it, leaving me standing, damp and naked, in our hotel room. I am smiling vaguely, senselessly, and Dief gives me a look of superiority from his nest atop Stanley's clothing.

The telephone rings as I am buttoning my long johns, flattening my good mood.  No one but my Inspector knows exactly where we are, and I think he would only call me out on a night like this, with the wind chill so low that traveling further than half a kilometer on foot could be a health risk, for an emergency. I turn the television off on my way to the telephone - so many tools, so many machines that I have not seen in a month. "Constable Fraser."

"Do you have any idea how hard you are to find?"

The span of a month suddenly dwindles into nothing; how long has it been since I've gotten a call like this? A year, two years? More than four since there has been anything more than a voice, but that's too much to think about. "I - I - no. Never having tried it."

He laughs, and the sound is a little strained. "No, I guess you wouldn't. God, it's good to hear from you, Benny."

What can I say? What could I ever say to this man? Nothing that mattered.  Nothing but the most elliptical, inconclusive hints at the truth. I have always been such a coward; only Stanley ever realized that and took it upon himself to be brave enough for two. "It's good to hear from you, too, Ray." Again, the surface of the truth, its image, but not the truth itself. His voice makes things rise in me - pain, pleasure, hunger, heat, aching tenderness. I loved him so long ago that the despair has taken on a gentle ambiance of nostalgia. _Remember when we worked together? Remember when you taught me how to go undercover? Remember when I thought I would lose Diefenbaker? Remember when we almost froze to death -- suffocated -- starved -- drowned? Remember when I wanted you so badly that I didn't think I would live through it? Weren't those the days, Ray?_

"Listen, Benny, I need you to come to Miami."

"Ray, I-" Miami. The word has almost no meaning to me, except for a few glimpses of tropical blues and whites in some photograph. "Ray, I - live in the Northwest Territories."

His voice is both impatient and beseeching; could anyone but Ray Vecchio combine those tones? "So pack up the wolf and the wife and get on a plane."

"To what does this pertain?" I hear myself asking primly, formally, as though I am interviewing him, screening my calls.

"It's about..." He sighs, and I can hear the stress again in his voice. He has my sympathy now, which only adds weight to - whatever I still feel for him. Loyalty, at the very least. "Look, I don't want to go into it over the phone, okay? This is family stuff, and you should be here for it."

Family. Mine? Impossible; Diefenbaker and Stanley are my family, all that I have in this world. Ray's family, then. His mother, his sister - his wife. "I -"  Whatever I want to say is so weak that I cannot even vocalize it. Of course I will go. Of course I could never forgive myself for turning him away when he so obviously needs me to be with him.

Or am I reading more into his words, his voice, than Ray himself would imagine?  Coloring his request with a _need_ that was always more my fantasy than his feeling?  And even more importantly, what does it mean, now, if he really does need me? Now that I am home, now that I have shaken the last dust of the United States off my feet long ago, now that it is Stanley for whom I reach every morning as I wake, not Ray Vecchio? Stanley whom I find. Unlike Ray.

"Of course," I say. My courage may not be equal to this, but then again, it may be. I have not seen Ray - have not loved Ray - in many years. Sometimes the past really is all in the past. And sometimes not. I cannot know, without going to Miami.  "I'll be there."

When he comes out of the bathroom, Stanley is still in possession of my towel, drying his hair with it, pushing a corner in with his finger to sop up the water in his ear. There were other towels above the towel rack; either he likes the one that holds my scent in its fibers, or he is too lazy to pull down a new towel when there is one closer to hand. Or maybe he was distracted, in that far-off place, and had no conscious knowledge of such mundane things as towels. He did shave his beard off, and he looks almost surprisingly familiar. Why should it be a surprise to see my own lover and recognize him?

Realization sluices over me, hot and loud like running water. This man is all but a stranger to me. I have known him for years - the better part of six years - and I cannot predict his changeable moods, can only speculate what wild and alien thoughts crowd his head, making his eyes glassy and his speech circular and opaque, do not even know what makes him prefer one white towel over another. Stanley is pure instinct - or so he would say in explanation. I have learned, in the wilderness, that instinct is the most exact of sciences; it rarely allows for digression or mutation.  The wolf is always the wolf, and its behavior, instinctual at the level of sinew and bone and genome, is thoroughly knowable.

Not so the behavior of the Stanley Ray Kowalski, tuft-crested North American variety.

"Fraser. Hey, Fraser, I'm talkin' to you."

"Ah." So often I have stalled in order to obscure my true meaning, but now I am playing for time, wondering what my own meaning is. The meaning of it all. Why am I here, now, like this? Why am I his, and he mine? How did this strange love begin, that passes understanding, as my grandmother might have said? I remember her saying that often, with her lips pressed together in a tight, displeased line. _It passes understanding. _ A surrender, but one under protest. A mystery, but one only grudgingly tolerated. My grandmother did not care for mysteries.

"How're we gonna get our laundry done if it stays like this outside?"

"I don't know," I say simply. His eyes widen at that, and he lets the towel drop forgotten around his neck. Such admissions, from me, are usually ringed in with a veritable catechism of other facts that I _do_ know. My vanity, my Mountie-perfect Mountiness, as Stanley would say.

Slowly, he shakes his head, scratching his scalp. "Fraser, I'm hungry, but you're delirious."

He still calls me Fraser. Always - when he teases me, when he yells at me, when he yells for me, when he is discussing laundry and the weather and the condition of the sled, when he is mumbling love into my ear. Fraser. That flat, long "a" sound, always pitched high to drop into a growl of annoyance, or possessiveness - an unfinished transformation much of the time, when the informality of long friendship and the casual contempt of familiarity strip off the final, responsive syllable. Truncated, denotation without connotation - Frase. His feelings are in the sound, in the shape of what he calls me. Fraser, Fraser, Fraser.

I love him. I need him.

_Benny, Benny, Benny_. What was in the sound of that, in the shape of the name that means _Ray_ to me even more acutely than _Ray_ does? _Ray Vecchio_ \- it became a front, a ruse, a prop for a lost and lonely man and a diversion for the Chicago Police Department as much as for the Iguana crime family. A meaningless identity, inhabited by people but not a person itself. There was no Ray Vecchio, not that I can remember. I remember Stanley, answering the phone with that light, almost disrespectful cadence: _Vecchio_ \- long, then down, then down again. There was another voice, another name, smooth with indulgent laughter, sly ambition, easy, earthy, uncomplicated affection - _Benny, Benny. Aw, Benny. C'mon, Benny...._

No, no. He and I were never - were nowhere - were nothing. Nothing.

I know this is unfair even as I think it. We were something, just not...everything. Just not what I wished that we were. What I still wish we had been...  Is it wrong to admit that, now? That I would like to be able to look back over my life, in the occasional nostalgic mood, and count Ray and I among my memories? They would only be memories, after all....

Las Vegas, Stanley, Stella - these things were not merely quirks of fate, random happenings in a chaotic universe. They came along when we needed them, because we needed them. Las Vegas to put badly needed distance between us. Stella to want him, the symbol of his ultimate victory over poverty and meaninglessness. Stanley to need me, Stanley to need me, Stanley to sneak up on me in the dark of my heart and never leave. These things have the weight of _will_ and _must_ behind them; they were part of our stories, part of our separate adventures. No matter what, we would have ended...just where we are now. We would have ended.

But to have begun... I would still rewrite history if I had the power.

Stanley casts a leg across mine, sinks onto my lap with his nose all but brushing mine. _Fraser, Fraser, Fraser_ his eyes say, alive with all the shades of green and grey that always did make me think of something much wilder than he claimed to be. I raise up my hands to his back; the skin is wet and warm, his and mine both.

He kisses me with lips, and I return the kiss with tongue. This is our kiss, length and breadth of the _us_, friction - which is Stanley's gift - interlocked with pressure - which must be mine. Our kiss, which has kept us warm through many endless winters, kept us caught up in each other though the whole world lay on our horizon.

_I was lying on my stomach, which was not usual for me, head pillowed on my forearms, one eye hidden by the crook of my elbow. He touched my back in the darkness, stroked its length with fingertips, rested his hand lightly on it._

_There was no period of questioning between us, no time when we asked with eyes or voices what this meant, where it would lead, whether or not it was wise. I think he must always have known. I think I knew so clearly in that endless moment with his hand on my back that I instantly paid the bill in full for years of blind self-absorption._

_I rolled over. We never spoke. We found one another, and then we learned to kiss. From that day forward, we never spoke of that night in terms of a beginning.  It was the seal, the coda, happily ever after._

_"Fraser," he said with his lips on my neck, but what I heard was _I love you_._

_"I love you," I said, but I suppose there is no real way to know what he heard._

Like his arms, his chest has gained definition over these last years. He is no longer "skinny," as he used to say - if indeed he ever was. Stanley was always lean and tough, his endurance compensating beautifully for a relative lack of pure strength. Now he can chop and lift and climb. He rides almost as well as I do. He handles the sled dogs better than I do. He fights, when he has to, with more power and efficiency than anyone I know. I lie back on the bed so that I can stroke his chest, and he leans down to take my little finger into his mouth, then to kiss my palm. The way he moves, the sight of muscle under pearl-gold skin, makes me glad that he does not expect me to speak.

I close my eyes.

I regret it.

_Old fantasies are not bound by the laws of time and space. They never age. They shadow you, wherever you go._

_I used to dream about his long legs, twining through mine._

_I used to run my hands down my own chest, replacing them in imagination with a narrower, longer-fingered, more graceful pair._

Long_ was a word that came often to my mind, when I used to indulge in fantasies of my partner Ray. His fingers, his throat, his legs - oh, his legs. The full stretch of him, long on my bed from the head to the foot, his arms upraised and crossed at their slender wrists. Long around me, like ivy, like the curl of a ribbon that binds up the one gift you want._

Long nights. God, so long without him.

So long without Ray Vecchio.

I pull Stanley down to kiss him, trying for that kiss again that is so perfectly us that it will drive out whatever else is inappropriate.

It is too late. The thought of him - _those_ thoughts of him - have made a murky, poisonous stew of my mind. He sprawls everywhere, tainting the feel of Stanley's hands burrowing under the backs of my thighs. Tainting even the memory of that night, that harder, less classically proportioned hand on my back. His silence - Stanley's silence. So different in meaning, denial versus bittersweet shyness, but both silence, leaving a still, nothing spot inside me that can be filled with anything. The worst, most unfair and unnecessary of thoughts.

Terrible, but not surprising, how naturally my long-buried desire for Ray makes itself at home in the stillness. For so many solitary nights, there was nothing but lonely stillness and a foolish, treasured dream of Ray.

One thought that comes new and unexpected to me - and unwelcome. Perhaps there never was silence, not from Ray, not from either of them. Perhaps the silence was entirely inside me.

I push Stanley away by the shoulders. I need his voice now, his teasing, his inarticulate tornado of random words and wordless sounds. "There's a restaurant downstairs," I tell him. "If you're hungry."

"Told ya that." He seems unconcerned by this interruption. He rolls away and begins to look for missing pieces of clothing.

The hotel restaurant is only a restaurant by virtue of a menu, consisting mainly of red meat and sandwiches. It is primarily a bar, complete with jukebox and pool table, although it seems to wish it were a pub. I wonder if it thinks about the mother country, the green rolling hills of rainy Britain, while fishermen and eighth-generation North American homesteaders track frozen grime and snow onto its warmly burnished floorboards.

It occurs to me that I am anthropomorphizing this establishment out of all recognition - and to what end? Because misery loves company, and I, too, am lost in a green dream of something I never knew?

Florida - and Ray.

Stanley makes quick contact with the other dozen or so patrons, giving them each the benefit of his twitchy nod or an ambiguous, flickering hand gesture that means _hello, I see you, hello, how are you, peace_. He was not like that in Chicago; he did not make eye contact with strangers, unless it was to challenge them. _Hey, what are you looking at, hey, I'm not afraid of you, keep your distance._

How Canada has changed my Stanley Ray. I see it in his walk, free, with the slight, heedless swing of a dancer or a boxer. His eyes are brighter, and he laughs his braying, gawking laugh more often without hiding it behind a nasal snort. When we take our seats, he doesn't pull his chair around backwards and press himself up against that unnecessary fence, as though there were some strange need in him to have something blocking him, something he can strain against. He just leans his chair back on the two rear legs, balancing with perfect unconscious grace, and orders a Canadian beer.

I try to imagine him walking on a beach, under palm trees and a white sun.

_Pack up the wolf and the wife and get on a plane._

Diefenbaker would love to go; in some strange way, although the difference is nothing I could describe, I think that he has never stopped missing Ray. They were close. They seemed to share some private language - both dogs, Stanley would say, and grin that charming grin that means he is pleased with his moment of cleverness.

"_Fraser_!"

"Yes, Ray?" Ray, not Stanley. He doesn't notice, or doesn't mention it. Of course, it certainly sounds normal to his ears; it was his name for most of his adult life. I don't know why he let me change it without a single complaint. Because he was in love with me, and accustomed to indulging my inexplicable whims. Because he was tired of taking another man's place, ready to go his own way at last. Because he saw something in my eyes when the three of us - Ray Kowalski, Ray Vecchio, and I - were together that soured the sound of it for him.

"Have you ever heard of this?"

"Of...which?"

He rolls his eyes dramatically. "Earth to Fraser. I'm saying, Polish sausage in the Yukon. I mean, this isn't like some trendy Yukon dish, is it?"

"Polish sausage? Oh, I rather doubt it, Ray." This time he does quirk an eyebrow curiously, but then seems to forget about it, literally or figuratively.

There is a moment of silence, and then, "That's it?"

I look up from the menu I can barely read, up to my lover's sharp, winter-pale eyes. I feel a pang - guilt, desire, longing. Longing to be rid of the burden of my emotional investment in another man, to be Stanley's completely. Who better to have by your side in the empty north than that rarest of creatures, the non-native who has adapted to the landscape's demands, learned to love its harshness with the fervor of the convert? Who better to have by your side in the empty dark than - than Stanley Ray Kowalski? Words fail me. What else could I call him? What else could he be?

"I mean, no historic background? No inside scoop on the hospitality industry in the Northwest Areas? No Polish sausage anecdotes?"

"None appropriate for mixed company."

"I mean, jeez, Fraser, if it only takes you- Hey, was that a joke?" He seems appalled and delighted in almost equal measure. "Was that, like, a dirty joke, Frase?"

I shrug, keeping my face as neutral as possible.

I have never seen a beach. Only in pictures. No ocean at all but a brief stay by the edge of the Bering Strait once.

Ray has a beachfront house; he told me that once. He sits on the back porch - I think, most likely - in those brightly colored shirts he always favored, wearing sunglasses, drinking brightly colored drinks in oddly shaped glasses.

As little alike as they were to begin with, it still amazes me how different they have become. Raucous, aggressive, exuberant, fiercely resilient Stanley, who found himself when he slipped the leash of the civilized world, giving up pretense and politics for the life of the dog pack, helping me shepherd the lost souls in this lost country back where they belong. The brittle and proud one, the one with the warrior-poet soul.

And Ray Vecchio, who always had more than a passing familiarity with the good life. Whatever his situation, he always managed to work the angles, as he himself would say, and find the hidden vein of wealth and comfort. Fine clothes, fine dining, a high taste for romance and for friendship as well, for whatever added that extra touch of luxury to an otherwise brutal and solitary life. The survivor, and the one who was never content with mere survival, but demanded to flourish.

It's hard even to believe that the same sun shines over them both - here above the Arctic Circle, there on the cusp of the Caribbean.

Harder still to believe that the same man ever loved them both.

From across the room, a short, burly man has caught Stanley's eye. "You two play?" he asks, tapping the side of the pool table with his cue. I see the spark of competitive passion flare up behind Stanley's carefully cool exterior.

"You play, Frase?" he asks me, as though relaying the message. Of course, he knows the answer.

"Not well, Stanley."

"You mind if I...?"

"Please do." He just sits there, staring at me. Eventually I realize what he is waiting for, and fish into a pocket for his glasses. I carry them everywhere.  God knows he was always haphazard at best about it.

He approaches pool like other men approach hunting or police work, with a cold and measuring eye, with caution, stealth, and cunning. It fires my blood to watch him; I am seeing him at his most raw, everything in him narrowed down to the fight, the challenge between himself and the laws of physics.

He approaches pool like he approached Canada, as though it wanted to defeat him, and as though there were no room in him for anything but victory. He once said to me, in a rare moment of words and warmth not long after we began the search for Franklin's hand, that he felt "maxed out" on failure, and although I struggled with the idea for some time, wondering how to assure him that his failures were inconsequential in comparison to the totality of the fine man I know as Stan Kowalski, eventually I came to understand what he had tried to tell me. Eventually I learned to let him be. Stanley is not the sort of man you can hold in your arms and breathe words of love into and expect the shadows simply to dissipate. Falling in love with   
Stanley is frightening and exhilarating, because it forces you to stand quietly by while he speaks with his regrets, burns his bridges, and chooses the hardest path possible. He earned this impossible beauty that now belongs to him doing just that. His freedom, his grace, his balance, his strength, his pride -- they were not gifts from me, much as I might have wished to be the giver. He built them in ice and blood and courage, and he wears them well.

The way he eyes the angle of his shot, the way he leans low over the table with his head down. I have never been flexible like Stanley is; my spine could not possibly snake that way, not after so many years in an RCMP uniform, which has a collar that the slightest slouch or slither will drive deep into your throat. It is as effective as obedience training. You will become iron and upright, or you will torture yourself to death. He wears his typical indoor uniform of blue jeans and t-shirt, and he looks...flexible. Chicago in his "style," even now - how could he be otherwise, with that hair, the bracelets, silver and leather, that clutter up the artistic line of his wrist, the edge of that tattoo glimpsed from under his sleeve, that swagger in his walk that only comes from being observable by hundreds of strangers every day of your life - but Yukon from his soul. Being native to this part of the world means being implacable in your resolve, immovable in your faith. It means knowing that you belong where you are, even when all of heaven and earth seems to disagree in the strongest possible terms. Oh, yes, Stanley is native to my country now. I brought him home with me in more than one sense.

Urban and wild, flexible and instinctual, gentle and predatory - all of these things at certain times, in certain senses, but wedded to none of them. He is so elusive, so hard to know. He is my nomad, my creature of the horizon.

Nothing at all like Ray - the other Ray.

As Stanley stands up, settling his grip firmly around the pool cue and planting it on end against the floor, my mind flashes powerfully back across the years. That pool table - that voice, weary with good-humored wisdom - _but he sure could play pool.... _ That glimpse, that shivered me with the intimacy of it, into the dark attic of Ray's past. He held the cue exactly as Stanley does now, a strange echo of similarity in these two dissimilar men.

I am the one who is dissimilar, though, in the most profound of ways. I have lost all similarity to myself. This is like the silence, all over again -- seeing something in one or both of them, only to realize that I am its source.

This new thought has the weight of revelation behind it. The lingering strangeness, unfamiliarity, between Stan and I - that is my own, too. He is no stranger to me, but I am to him. There is so much I have never told him, so much that I never tried or wanted to confess. The change in me over the years made it easier to bury that old, dissimilar self in favor of the new Benton Fraser. The one who is happy.

The man I was back then has been gone for so long that I look back on him now like an alien or an archaeologist, wondering what it must have been like to be him.  How could I have been so hungry, so unhappy, so full of self-loathing and that ruthless depression that followed me for so very many years, always threatening to become despair but never quite taking mercy on me long enough to just _do_ it, just let me sink into the cold sea of madness and silence? How did I get up each morning and go on, and how did I hide it even from the man who knew me in some ways so very well?

Duty, I suppose, although duty was much too weak to comfort me in the depths of my sorrow. If Victoria taught me nothing else, she taught me that. There is no solace for me in duty; I will live all my life knowing that when it truly made a difference, I called my duty a poor excuse and meant it.

Hope, maybe. Blind, confused, tenuous, but ultimately persistent hope. I felt it that day, alone in the quiet, sun-filled dining room with Ray and his ghosts and his father's pool table, and I chose one more time to go on, to cling to my life in the hope that it would not always hurt this much inside.

Of course, it came to hurt even more. Very quickly.

Stanley is grinning; it is his turn again, and he is very well placed to win.  He looks over at me, and his focus narrows. I am all he sees now, and he presses his lips together in what I have always secretly thought of as his "how badly _do_ you want me, Fraser?" smile and cocks his head. I nod, confirming his high opinion of his chances.

For the first time, it occurs to me that I have promised to leave Stanley behind or drag him to Miami. I am ashamed that it has only now occurred to me that I might have asked his opinion.

There is a selfishness in me that is profound. I think of the day I helped Ray Vecchio move his pool table, how deeply I fancied myself in love with him on that afternoon, how thoroughly I betrayed him less than a week later. I would have done anything, I am sure, in the desperate hope that it would take that loneliness away from me. In the desperate hope that someone could know everything dark and shameful about me and want me in spite of it. That someone, of course, was Stanley Kowalski, but once I thought it was Victoria.

I look at Stanley now, drawn up tall like a bird displaying for a mate, his champagne-sparkling eyes sliding constantly over to me, his small, contained smile a rigorous seduction, and I want to hide all of this from him. Miami, Ray's voice on the telephone again after so many years, my sins, my hell, my secret fantasies.

No. He is my partner, my prince in mousse and thick glasses, the only thing I ever held in my arms and felt good enough to accept the happiness. He deserves to know - he _has_ to know eventually, but more than that, he does deserve it. To know that I am going to Miami. To know that there is a space in my past that is black like the grave and that I am forced to visit again and again in the private prison of my mind. To know that I see now how spurious my claim to have closed the book, as they say, on Detective Ray Vecchio really was. Fleeing from him was not the same as putting him behind me.

He wins his pool game. His days of failure are behind him. Flush with the competition and the victory, his hunger has fallen by the wayside, and he eats his sandwich without seeming to notice it, eager to retreat from the public sphere again. "Somethin' dogging you, Frase?" he asks at last, though his leg is twitching, ready to get up and move.

"I wouldn't say 'dogging,' Stanley."

That makes him smile broadly. "No, I guess you would not, you being you. So, what should I make it? How about, somethin' preying on your mind, Constable Fraser, my good friend?"

"I referred not so much to your choice of words in the strictest sense as to what they seemed to connote."

"Yeeow. Back that truck up, Fraser, huh?"

"Nothing is preying on my mind. There are...a few things I'd like to talk with you about, but we'll get to them in due time."

He shrugs. If there is still insecurity left in Stanley - and doubtless there is, as there is in almost all of us - it is not bound up in our relationship. He trusts me to tell him the important things, and if I say I am in no hurry, then neither is Stanley. We have time to finish our supper.

But somehow, I find as we climb the stairs back to our hotel room that time has run out. There is no advance warning; it is a frighteningly swift change from neutrality to upwelling love and need for this man, my life partner, and I have neither the power nor the desire to shut these feelings out. He is only a step above me, and I reach out to hold him by one shoulder, the other hip. Like waltzing, I turn him and lead him, and now we are pressed together, chest to chest as our breathing deepens in unison.

Stanley tilts his head back, rough-shorn hair scrubbing against the wood paneling of the walls, and I kiss the offered neck while his arms perch atop my shoulders and his thigh makes small circles against mine. "Can't resist a pool shark, can you, Fraser?"

I want to touch him, everywhere I can reach. My hands pull possessively at the backs of his legs, cup his buttocks, show me in a language deeper than speech or sight what I have in him. "I apparently cannot."

"Yeah, well..." His back arches, driving his chest more firmly against mine, ignoring the buttons on my uniform that must press painfully through his thin shirt.  "I think they let me win."

"Now, why would they do that, Ray?"

"You keep calling me that."

"I'm sorry."

"Whatever. A person talks as much as you, he's gonna say almost anything at least a couple of times." I interpret that as a request for a kiss, and he takes it readily, running his hands through my hair and letting my tongue find its way through the familiar territory it encounters. When I pause for breath, he speaks against my parted lips. "Good Canadian boys, they probably don't want to show up a Mountie in a game of pool."

"You are not a Mountie."

"Yeah, but they saw me come in with you. They probably thought I was."

I consider the idea, but it takes a massive leap of imagination. "I would doubt that."

"Well...that, plus I told them I was one."

My head jerks back. "You _told_-" Ah. I see by his smile that I have been, as they say, had.

"Gotcha."

A part of me that rarely finds voice says quite clearly, _make him stop talking_.  I would never phrase it like that, not to Stanley, but there is a perfectly reasonable impulse behind it, and one of which even he must approve. I kiss him with everything I have, savaging his mouth as my hands continue upward, under the cotton of his shirt and across his warm back. I feel as though I could wrap literally around him, be on all sides of him at once, make him a piece of me. In fact, my arms seem to be trying to do just that, gathering him in closer and closer, until I can taste his shortness of breath. Still, he makes no attempt to complain. This is the best of us - not the kissing, heady as it is, but the heedlessness, the need we have to be together that never seems fulfilled. Oh, but the lack is sweet; the impossibility of perfect union gives such value to moments like this that I think someday it will shatter me into pieces. Having him, being tied to him and tangled with him, without caution, without limits.

"Upstairs," I manage to gasp before his teeth clip my lower lip. As soon as I give him room, he is out from under me and running. I keep up.

Outside our window it looks like Ragnarok, and I can't imagine anything surviving in the open, although I realize of course that many things do. I can't imagine, for my own part, being anywhere but in this warm place, neither entirely civilized nor entirely wild, that will serve, for tonight, as a tiny, horizonless world. Our earth, our home - as anywhere that Stanley and I are together cannot hope but be home.

He spares not one single glance to the window or the bed; he sees nothing but me. One-handed, he pulls the shirt off over his head, and the glasses drop forgotten to the floor. I cannot wait for his fingers to navigate the button and zipper of his jeans; I do the work for him and impatiently plunge my hand inside, wanting to see his face as I wrap my hand around his erection. He groans, expressive in his pleasure and his impatience, and begins to work on my Sam Browne and my brass buttons indiscriminately as his hips take up a lazy, subtle rhythm.

Too much time, it all takes too much time. I want him, and I use the only other tool I have at my disposal. "Stanley," I say, hearing my voice rough but strong.  "What did I ever do to deserve someone like you?"

"You're a freak magnet, baby." His voice is flippant and liquid at once, a purr of contentment rolling out around a chuckle. "Oh, yeah," he groans, finally through enough layers of my clothing to make contact, palm to chest. "Yeah, more of _this_.  This is the good stuff."

I taste his skin, and the sweat that is beginning to bead in the hollows of his collarbone. Now we are almost gridlocked, barely able to move with enough agility to continue undressing one another, grinding together in a counterproductively intimate embrace. But I don't care. I can't release him, can only keep trying to make him weak with my voice. "We have more passion between us at this very moment than I knew all my life before you."

I feel his spine weaken; he is letting me hold him up now, which I am glad to do, and the movement of his hips, back and forth against my fist, is no longer subtle. "God - God, yeah - baby, ohhh yeah."

"You taste - so perfect." I cannot stop kissing him, over and over, even though my lips are nearly numb with it and his mouth tastes no different from my own by now.

"Christ, Fraser!" He slams against my hand, his fingers digging into my shoulders. "I have to - I got - Fraser, Fraser, stop. Stop it."

Reluctantly, I loosen my fingers around him. "What's wrong?"

He is flushed, glittering - on the knife's edge, or perhaps he _is_ the knife's edge. I shiver, thinking of that, of the speed and lightness and deadliness of a Bowie knife in my hand. "C'mon. We got this, this bed, right here, regular bed, like. Gotta do it right, huh? Do me right, huh, Frase, y'know? Gonna fuck me, yeah.  Fuck me. Fuck me..."

I am tempted to swear myself, try out his words on my tongue as I fight his jeans over my fist. This is too difficult - _fuck_. Why can't it be the way it is in my fantasies, everything real falling away from us, nothing between us but the feeling, the need? Frustrated, I break the deadlock between the zipper and me, shoving him down hard to the bed, kneeling over his legs, working the zipper with both hands now and stripping the jeans off of him roughly. Now, at long last, he is entirely naked, arching underneath me and gripping my legs. He smiles, a surprisingly slow smile for a man so obviously beyond patience. "Frase?"

"Yes, Stan?"

"Go across the room for the lube in the suitcase and I swear I'll fucking kill you."

"Understood." And agreed. This has to happen here and now; fortunately, our lifestyle has required us many times in the past to be inventive, and we both know how to do this. I give him my fingers, slip them inside his mouth and into his throat, and he uses his tongue on them, making the act not a preface to sex, but part of the sex itself. I am shrugging out of my suspenders, willing my uniform to behave itself and obey me, and perhaps the guardian angel of the RCMP is the romantic sort, for the pieces come off, more or less off, without much effort at all.

My fingers fit easily inside him, slippery with his own saliva, and even though he is snarling in impatience, not to be satisfied with any substitute for me buried deep inside him, I take the time to do it right, rubbing against his prostate until he is growling and yowling, his fingers dug painfully deep into the muscles of my arm. I am already thrusting, and the underside of my cock rubs breathily back and forth across his pelvis, the top of his thigh. It is a light, sharp, excruciating pleasure, and I could not stop now, not for anything. It is, to be as blunt as humanly possible, come or die at this point.

There is nothing in all the world like being sheathed completely in the heat and pressure of Stanley Kowalski. A fit of uncontrollable shaking almost overtakes me; the pleasure is too intense, so awful and so necessary that for a moment, as always, it seems I have to fight myself to accept it. But once I manage it, and I am in him with his legs over my shoulders, the fight is over. Now I am of one mind, with one goal, and I begin to thrust.

Manic as always, Stanley sets up a delirious, half-intelligible soundtrack to our desperate lovemaking - "Crazy like that nail me baby Jesus wanna yeah Fraser my baby wanna best ever one I want you're it greatness real deal do me please Fraser yeah need you bad fuck me my Fraser" - and I want to kiss him but I can't be without the sound of his voice, not now, so I settle for holding his hips to me and running the flat of my tongue over the freshly shaved skin on his cheek and jaw.

I must be hurting him - I must be. I am almost hurting myself, the pleasure trembling on the edge of excruciating, the desperation in our primal thrusting raking me over hot coals. My voice makes a sudden harmony with his, no words, just a thick, deep sound. It is almost unity, almost perfect fulfillment. My voice over his words, my orgasm in his flesh, my body weakened and trembling in the warm, living trap of his arms and legs. I kiss him as soon as I have my breath back, and pressed down over him, I can feel the slick evidence of Stanley's own orgasm making our stomachs slip against each other.

He exhales on a mild groan as he moves his legs, stretches them out flat on the bed. He is flexible, much more so than I am, but he is rather past the most resilient days of his youth. He is a man in his prime, my Stanley Kowalski. My fears of earlier this evening seem nothing short of absurd now. This is a good man at his best, and our passion is a power that makes the impossible unavoidable. It overturns civilization, it subdues the wilderness, and we live it, day in and day out, embedded in the constant, essential now of the two of us. We will be here, just like this, forever, with sun and moon circling around us, north and south and east and west arrayed about us, and Stanley and I in the center of it all.

My kisses have been coming softer and more slowly for some time now, and I roll onto my side, letting my fingers trace across his chest. Stanley smiles that suggestive, satiated little smile and folds his hands behind his head. "You are so beautiful," I say, my voice unexpectedly low and shy.

His smile becomes a grin, boundlessly joyful. "As art, I would not stand the test of time."

"Ridiculous."

"But who wants to live forever?"

I think his question is rhetorical, so I continue to touch him without an agenda, just maintaining the connection between us. Something nags at the back of my mind....

Ah, yes. Miami. "Stanley," I say. His eyes are half-closed in pleasure, and he ignores me. "Stanley. Stan-_Stanley_."

"Wha?"

"There was a telephone call while you were in the shower."

That gets his attention enough to make him open his eyes. "No kidding? Who called us?"

"Ray Vecchio."

He snorts, but not disdainfully, just from the unexpectedness of it.  "Wonders never cease."

"He wants - that is, I need to -"

"Ante up, Fraser. What's going on in that head?"

I take a deep breath. "There's something I need to do. In Florida."

Sometimes, after all these years, I still forget how wholly _different_ Stanley is from ordinary people. I may be the freak, but there is something decidedly peculiar about the way he thinks, as well. Almost anyone else would ask me what I needed to do in Florida, but that question does not seem to occur to Stanley.  "I always figured the next time I saw the States it would be Chicago. I haven't been to Florida since I was eight."

That simple. I need not take this any further; I could let it rest here, having received his tacit approval for the trip, and forget all about it for the night.  Stanley can easily make me forget for the night, I know.

But that is a violation of some unwritten rule. I see that now. I see so clearly, if not exactly in words, why it was wrong all along to conceal the things that matter to me from Stanley, just because I might not want them to matter to me.  "May I make a confession?" I say, almost in a whisper.

"Have at."

I close my eyes, rest my cheek gingerly against his arm, and I say it for the first time in my life. "I was in love with him once. With Ray."

"Yeah?" No expression at all.

"Yes."

"Well, do I get to do confessions, too?"

"If you like." Now I am beginning to be suspicious that he is not taking this seriously. Does he think I use words like that lightly?

He drops his voice to a sly mimicry of mine, but something in the softness of his relaxed face keeps it from being a slap. "I use to be in love with Stella."

"Really, Stanley, I don't-"

"Yeah, well, _really_ yerself. You're putting me on, right, Frase? You don't expect me to - I don't know, get all shocked or upset or something because you had feelings for someone other than me before we even met?"

I don't like the pettiness of it, in the way he says it. "Well, I..."

"You're such a fuckin' romantic." His warm tone makes it a caress, a tease, almost a compliment.

"I love you." I don't know if I am putting up a defense, or thanking him.

Stanley smiles at the ceiling. "I'm not as dumb as I look, Fraser. I know that. And you were - what? thirty-six, thirty-seven when I met you, and I wasn't that much younger, and who the hell am I, of all people, to get my shorts on backwards because you didn't spend all that time hanging around and dreaming about some spiky-haired, freaky Polish guy you didn't even know existed?"

Something in me wants to argue with him, but there is a disarming, if simplistic, logic in his words. I think I may not be expressing myself well.  The magnitude of my unhappiness in those days - the way my love for him sustained me, maybe even saved my life - surely that makes it different. Surely....

If I can only find the words. If I can only open the door for him. There is so much that I have to say, so much that I cannot carry any further than this by myself.  I trust him completely. It has nothing to do with him, and everything to do with me, this choking, brutal impulse toward silence, toward aloneness. Once I needed it, needed the ability to be enough for myself and need no one else, but now after years of labor, I think - I think I am done with it, done completely and forever.

My heart starts to beat lightly and rapidly. I am so close to the end of this long journey, so close to accomplishing the impossible. If I can only find those first words, the magic words that turn like a key in a lock....

They come to me both slowly and suddenly, in the same way that dawn comes up over the horizon. I open my mouth, shy away once, and swallow the butterflies in my mouth. I shift my position slightly; I will be awake all night, I think, talking to him.

"I came to Chicago on the trail-"

"Aw, _Christ_, Frase-"

I put my hand gently over his mouth. "Please. Please." When I move my hand, he just nods.

"Of the killers of my father...."

I have all night to tell him my story.


	2. Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down

They're probably carrying every single thing they own, but it isn't the efficiency of their packing skills that impresses me, it's the way they work together. It's like they have a playbook somewhere, with things like the Dogsled pass and the Checker Cab handoff. It's like the freaking Musical Ride, and they're out of the taxi with everything they own strapped and wrapped around them in ten seconds flat. Kowalski tips the driver, of course; Benny probably to this day refuses to carry any currency that doesn't have the Queen's picture on it.

This is gonna be harder than I thought.

He hasn't changed, not one trimmed hair, not since the day I saw him last - my wedding day. He's in the brown uniform, which has to be hell in the wet Florida heat, but it's gotta be illegal to sweat in Canada, because he won't do it. Same set mouth, same firm jaw, same walk, same Constable Benton Fraser, RCMP. Nothing ever changes with him - not if he has anything to say about it, that is.

Fuck. He's going to fight me every step of the way on this, underhanded and oh-so-reasonable and full of that neurotic, blue-eyed charm, and I'm the bad guy. I'm always the bad guy next to him, and -

Don't start this. Don't take it there. I'm me, he's him, and this little reunion isn't about us, anyway. This is business.

Businesslike, I scope his little blond shadow. Ray the Latter, wired and handsome and hardened like an over-the-hill hustler, his t-shirt too tight, his fatigues too loose, looking like he's just rolled out of bed after a three-day bender. Wild card. Is he going to fight me, too? I don't know him well enough to guess. He's loyal to Benny, but there's more than just Benny to think about, here. Even Stella doesn't know whose side he'll come down on, in the end, which is enough to make me nervous. He could be the swing vote.

And Diefenbaker makes three. Now, he's changed. Aged. 

Dammit, there's a weird sensation in my sinuses as I brush up against the thought of Dief getting older and slower and wearing out. I'm so fucking hair-triggered lately.

With each step he takes up the porch stairs, the memories are trampling toward me, getting closer and pounding out all the years between last time and this time until they might as well be dead, or never existed to start with. Benny, and the way he could sound so patient even when I knew he wasn't feeling patient at all. Benny, and how he used to lure me out with questions and fake misunderstandings that needed correction, and all kinds of other wordy little games, until I ended up saying exactly what he wanted me to. Benny and those eyes that were so honest they could harrow me all the way down when he turned them on me full force, giving me so much of what was in that crazy, contradictory, bright-dark head of his that I thought I couldn't stand it.

And I'm sorry all over again, so damn sorry I want to get down on my literal, honest-to-God _knees_ and make him forgive me. I was such a coward.

But instead of genuflecting, I just shut up and hug him. He feels surprisingly...real, in my arms. There was always some part of Fraser that didn't quite live where the rest of us did, something that was off - I don't know, thinking or sleeping or trying to catch up to him. We've touched each other plenty of times, but it's different now, I guess because we've finally given up the ghost and admitted that we know everything there is to know about each other. No holding back, not anymore. That last wall of awkwardness between us is gone, now that Benny's out of the closet, I'm out of his life, and there's no chance left, not one in a hundred million, that this is going to come to anything more than what it is, what it's always been.  Freedom through futility - who knew?

"I hope you're well, Ray," he says, in that shy way he has even when he's not feeling shy at all.

"Can't complain." And that's sure as fuck a new thing. Back when he knew me, I don't think I did anything but complain. Everything just seems - stupid and trite though it sounds - too important now, for me to waste my time and divide my attention, wishing it was different. I've got all these balls in the air, and there comes a point where you've gotta love it, your life, because there's no backing out now. I pull away, and stick out my hand for Ray.  "Hey, Kowalski. Slowing him down much?"

There's a firmness to his handshake that reminds me a hell of a lot of Fraser. "Hey, Vecchio. You're aging real graceful. I can respect that."  He's only two years younger than I am, but give a man in his forties a full head of hair, and he thinks he's the second freaking coming. 

But there's something a little off about his bravado; he's unfocused, fronting real well, but not really looking at me. A couple of seconds later, I peg it, the almost perfectly concealed tic, his eyes flicking again and again over my shoulder, to the window. Wondering if she's inside. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Keep your pants on, Kowalski, we're getting to it.

Deep down, I'm a little jealous of him, because for a few minutes here, he's totally innocent. He's on vacation in Florida, he's maybe a little nervous about seeing his ex-wife, but mostly he's been Robin up there in the Gotham Territories, having a high old time, in that please-Jesus-Christ-don't-get-me-killed way that Fraser's friends always do. He hasn't been down here,   
with her, day after day, dealing with this. Having a nice vacation, Kowalski?  Yeah, well, fuck you. Welcome to my life.

I don't know where this is coming from, this anger that's honing in on him. I'm just _pissed off_. Because Stella loved him first. Because he had the genes, the wiring, whatever, to love Benny back, and I didn't.  Because life and death is a game to him, fucking forest-ranger detective supercop adventure boy, and life and death has become my morning, noon, and night and I   
deal with it all by myself.

But I suck it in. Because today isn't about that, either. Today is about Fraser. And like it or not, we gotta get off the fucking porch. Let's take it inside, gentlemen. I reach behind me for the screen door and say, "Mi casa es su casa."

"Thank you kindly, Ray."

"Yeah, well, don't thank me yet," I can't help but grumble.

She's waiting on the sofa, and she puts her hand on the arm when she stands up; she's not weak, she's feeling good today, but it's become habit.  She's wearing jeans that aren't cut to be baggy but kind of are on her, and even though she smiles, I can tell she's nervous, nervous out of her mind as her ex-husband stares hard at her. He's a fucking detective. He's not stupid. 

Stella starts to run a hand over the scarf covering her head, but changes it at the last minute to a tug on her earring. "Hi, Ray. Fraser."

"You...Stel...."

Fraser's hand comes down on his arm, a low-key Benny gesture that means _Shut up before you embarrass us both_. "Hello, Stella. How-" I almost want to laugh as I see him pull up out of that one, a hard reverse. "This is a beautiful house."

"Fuck the house! Fuck the-"

"Shhh," she orders Ray sharply, and he shuts up fast. "Please, there's- Just don't yell, Ray."

And I don't really envy him anymore. Because I was always the kind of guy who pulled the Band-Aid off slow instead of fast, and this is fast, and I can see him grinding his teeth and shifting from one side to the other and shaking his hands out over and over and wanting to freak out. "Have a seat," I say, pretending just as hard as Benny that this is all really, really   
okay. But I'm better at it, because I've been doing it for almost a year now.

"Tell me," he says quietly, a low, sad voice, and I see her crumple up inside, and I suspect that he had his ways, back in the day, of getting what he wanted, too. "Just...what's going on?"

She sits down, prim and straight-backed, and being Stella, she doesn't fuck around, just says it, information, no big deal. "Ovarian cancer."

Benny looks over at me, and I know he doesn't want me to see the horror in his eyes, but I do, and I almost want to laugh. Shit, he thinks this is why he's here. Like she's gonna die this fucking weekend or something, and I'm going to ask him to make it all better, and he's wondering what the hell he's going to do to fix this one. Yeah, that _would_ be hell on earth for you, wouldn't it, Benny? What are you going to do - talk about your feelings? Move to Florida so I won't be alone? Tell me it's going to be okay? Drag me back to Canada and pretend we're partners again? Shit, now I _really_ want to laugh. I can just see him doing any of those things, doing it because it's the Right Thing to Do, and quietly going ballistic inside. How totally fucking absurd.

"Hey, come on," I say out loud. "You know, I really hate it when I invite the guys over to my place and all they can do is stare at my wife." She meets my eyes, and she smiles at me. In spite of what Fraser would say, too much honesty isn't always a good thing, and Stella and I, we understand the lie we live, where she's still full of energy and a gorgeous blonde   
knockout and I have guy friends because I do all kinds of other things besides staying home to take care of her, staying home so I don't miss the time with her that becomes more and more crucial as the months tick by and the doctors say the word "recovery" less often and the words "quality of life" and "pain management" a lot more.

So Benny and Kowalski wade right on in, and there's a little small talk, not much, as they put their bags down and get settled in, and Benny's face is blankly polite, and Kowalski looks like he wants to chew through something, but he's keeping a lid on it for the moment. He keeps shooting me these little glares that look a lot like, _What the hell did you do to my wife, Vecchio?_

The small talk dies and Kowalski's still glaring and Stella's eyes are narrowing impatiently and Fraser looks like he's gone into cryogenic storage, and I realize, none too patient myself, that they're going to track that good, messy, muddy, Canadian honesty all over my lying-like-a-rug rug, and shit, this is _not_ going to work, this not talking about it business. So let's get it over with instead. "All right, look. Stella's gone back into chemo, so we're both pretty busy with that. We were - doing some other stuff, taking care of some things, that we just can't keep up with right now, and Benny...."

I don't know how long I stall there. He's looking at me with those eyes, those sympathetic, interested, attentive blue eyes. Benton Fraser, RCMP, who doesn't change. Who doesn't talk about his feelings. Who is so strong that he's brittle with it. Whose every weakness I know, and oh, yeah, this is one of them. This is _all_ of them, practically. I take a couple breaths.

"Benny, I called you for some help. You've got to step in for us.  Take over...."

"Of course, Ray. Any help you need from me, you have it." Yeah. Sure. 

I glance at Kowalski, but I don't think he's even listening. He's still ripping holes in my wall with his eyes. _Processing_, they call it, I guess.

And now we're at the moment of truth, the sticking point. The crux - that was a word Benny used to use. The crux of the issue. And I look at Stella, but she doesn't seem to have the words for it any more than I do.  "Stel," I say gently, "you wanna just go bring her out here?" We do one of those split-second married-people arguments with our eyes, and I win. She stands up and walks down the hall. Kowalski's twitching so hard now I think he might rattle apart. He wants to follow her. He wants to get her alone, and he probably hasn't even thought far enough ahead to ask himself what he plans to say.

I don't look at Benny, even though I can feel him looking searchingly at me.  I hear Stella's voice, muffled and soothing, and then she comes back, holding the kid's hand.

"This is Grace," I say, striving for that Exhibit-A, suave Stella voice.  "Grace, kiddo, this is-"

"Company," she says, grave and level, the way she always talks.  "We're having company come." I nod, and she turns the eyes on them, observing, noticing. She's like that now, really _watchful_. It's like the old paranoid skittishness, only better, much better. She feels safe now, but still, she watches everything. Not a bad habit to have, really.

"Hiya, Grace," Kowalski says automatically, and I can see she's punched his awww buttons, because he looks warmer, calmer than even just a second ago. Grace punches everybody's awww buttons, even more than your average six-year-old kid does. She's calendar-perfect, with her soft brown curls in a ponytail and her kitten-round face and her eyes that look like she's a hundred years old, except that she still _cares_ about shit, in the way that only - mostly - a little kid can. Little kids and Fraser.

Fraser murmurs a little hello following on Kowalski's heels, but it lapses off, just a token politeness. Grace sits on the couch beside Stella, and she watches Fraser, and Fraser watches her. "Grace has been with us for five months," Stella explains - or doesn't explain, really. Just lobs the ball back to me, sets it up for me to explain. Except that I don't know, I really just don't fucking know where to start explaining.

So I go for it, past the explaining part, into the meat of it.  "Grace is our foster-daughter. Except that...Stella.... We're just too tied up right now to give her any kind of real attention, you know?" I telegraph it as best I can with my eyes: and we don't want her to see Stella get sicker and maybe die, right there in the house that was supposed to be Grace's safe home.   
Fraser nods. He gets where I'm going with that. He was around Grace's age when his mother died, and it's funny that I hadn't remembered that until just now. But it's another point in my favor. "But we're not sending her to family services." That's the one thing I know. Grace may not be blood, but she's family enough that I'm not just dumping her off on someone, I don't care if it's freaking Cliff and Claire Huxtable. No strangers.

I don't really have to ask; it's very clear to both of them what I'm driving at. They look at each other, Benny and Ray, and they have a split-second married-person argument with their eyes, but I can tell it breaks off unresolved. Probably neither of them really know _what_ fucking side they're on right now.

And that's when I realize that I've screwed up, because there's more that Benny needs to know, and I'm not sure we can talk in front of Grace.  I wanted him to see her, wanted to shoot him up with a little of that baby-mammal juice, make it harder to say no. But now I'm stuck, and I have to find some way to get him alone.

"Ray," he says evenly, "may I see you on the porch?" I grin at that, relief and the sudden pleasure of memory. He always knew exactly what had to happen next, like it or not. Behind us as we leave, I hear Grace's high, clear voice, saying, "Is he a policeman? Because Stella said Ray's friend from the police force was coming, but that doesn't look like a police force uniform."  I close the door on Kowalski's voice responding.

He stands almost at attention, stiff and duty-bound, and his eyes are lost.  "Ray...I want to help you. I want to do anything you need. But - Stanley and I - that is, our _lives_, - well, Ray, we just - for a young child, very bad situation, environment-"

"Fraser. Fraser, shut up a second. I know that, okay? I know how much it's going to fuck you guys up."

"I don't want to sound...selfish, Ray...."

I laugh. Benny, _selfish_. Uh-huh, sure. Pull the other one, it's got bells on it. "No, no, you don't, Benny. I know you're worried about her well-being and all that. You gotta believe me, I thought about this too. I thought about it a lot. But you grew up in the Yukon, and I'm not gonna say it didn't do you any harm or anything-" Little joke, little smile, little softening of the ramrod back in response, "but maybe you turned out okay."

"Ray, there's - I don't want to sound suspicious, Ray, but I think there's more to this than you've told us yet."

"Do you?"

"Yes, I do. You said that Stella was undergoing chemotherapy _again_, implying that there's been at least one previous series of treatments, and a full battery of chemotherapy treatments takes several months. If Grace has only been with you for five months - well, I just can't figure out why you would have taken on a responsibility like this if you already knew that Stella's   
health would be an issue."

I sit down on the porch swing, pick at the paint with my nails. "It just...kinda happened."

"I see," he says, in that way that means that he's still waiting for me to say something he can work with.

Normally I keep the clipping in a fire-proof box, along with some other stuff we wanted to keep for Grace, but this morning I took it out and put it in my wallet. I get it out again now and hand it over to Fraser, and our fingers brush a little as he takes it, and there I am, looking up at him, apologizing for everything from beginning to end. For not being the cop he wanted me to be.  For taking off to Vegas when I knew I was the only thing he had anymore. For taking off to Miami when I knew we'd never talked about all the stuff that had been going on between us and around us for years. For throwing the good life he's got going all out of orbit now, dumping all this on him at once and disappearing again. He flushes a little and looks away from my eyes, down at the newspaper clipping as if he can hide and be safe there. Ha ha.

I watch, forcing myself to stay cool and let him _process_. He goes white immediately; I'm sure he sees the photo before he reads any of the words, the black-and-white image that has to punch right through at him, worse even than it did when I saw it staring at me over my morning eggs. I watch him force his eyes to scan the words, which I know now by heart. Unidentified woman - hotel housekeeping staff found - noose - suicide - young child found hiding in hotel laundry facility - seeking information.

He folds it up, in the same careful way that people move when they know they're drunk and are trying hard to compensate, and he leans back against the pillar on my porch and closes his eyes. After a second he opens them again, and goddamit, he's in tears. Not crying yet, but his eyes magnified by the gloss of goddamn _tears_. That, more than anything else, makes it feel like she just _won't_ fucking die. Not ever.

"I don't - I don't understand," he says, trying to pull himself together, but sounding so damn lost. "She wouldn't - I never thought of her - not suicide. It doesn't seem-"

"Yeah," I say, clipped, bitter. "Seems like a girl like that coulda found plenty of people to do the job for her." I would've volunteered, if I'd known she was in Miami.

He looks a little surprised. Well, Christ, Benny, you think _I_ cried for her? Trust me, there are only two people in this world who didn't want that woman dead, and the other one is only six years old, so she's got a fucking excuse. But, no, no good. I can't bitch Fraser into this one. Fraser tucks the clipping into a jacket pocket, and I let him. You can't - can't make Fraser do fuck-all where Victoria Metcalf is concerned. I know that. I know that better than anyone.

"And so you identified her for the police."

"Yeah, I did. I saw her body, Benny. She's dead."

"And Grace...."

I sort of expected him to get it, but from his lack of expression, I realize I'm going to have to keep at this. Jesus, is this day ever gonna end?  "She was with family services, and I couldn't - just leave her there."

"That's - very compassionate of you, Ray."

How can someone this smart be this stupid? Nah, what am I thinking?  Fraser could always be rock fucking stupid when he wanted to be. "Benny. Do the fucking math, all right?"

"Math, Ray?"

"_Benny, goddammit!_"

"Ray, there's no need to yell at-" And then it kicks in, and he stops on a dime, mute and amazed. "No. I - no, Ray, it's not possible."

"Of course it's _possible_, you big moose."

"No," he says again, quietly, no faith behind it. I don't even bother to argue with him, for once.

Benny comes around by me and sits down with me on the porch swing. So here we are, you know? Almost a decade ago, Benton Fraser, RCMP, walked up out of nowhere and asked me to help him fix this awful thing that had happened to him, this thing I couldn't even imagine. Asked me to help find the person who'd taken away the only family he had left. Me, I had plenty of family. I had family crawling the walls. And all I wanted was the easy way out, just coast through to my next raise, and Fraser wanted _everything_, there was never a second of, Oh, just forget that for right now or But that's no big deal. Not with him. We couldn't have been more different.

And I don't know what happened, but I know that I give a fuck about my life now, and that's new since I met him. I let myself care, and it brought me here, and it's so fucking hard, it hurts so much more than coasting ever could have, but still, everything's a big deal, I wouldn't want to forget any of the things that led me from there to here, wouldn't give anything away. I reach out and take hold of Fraser's hand, and we keep on sitting like that.

He gave me these Fraser-colored glasses, the ability -- even if it doesn't come naturally, even if I don't use it every second of every day - to take things to heart, to treat even the little shit, even the _awful_ shit, like it really counts for something. It took a while before I could thank him for that; for a long time it was just scary, terrifying, actually. I ran away from it; at the time I didn't call it running away, but that's exactly what it was. Ran away from the fact that my best friend had these feelings for me, and I couldn't coast through it, I fucking _cared_, cared that he was hurting and that I had a million chances to say something but didn't know what to say. 

Later on, I began to get it, to see that even this awful thing, the way I let Benny down, the way he wanted me to fill this hole in his life that I justcouldn't...even this awful thing was something I wouldn't want to lose. It washim, it was me, it hurt, but it mattered, I felt it, I keep it even now, touching on my heart, like Victoria touches on his, like Stella touches on Ray's.

I know I was a coward. I know there were a million times that would have been the right time to say something, just to say, Benny, whatever happens or never happens with us, wherever we're going, I did everything in my sleep before I met you, so thanks. Thank you. Kindly.

And it's not like I can ever even things up between us. But once, nine years ago, he came to this total stranger and said, Hey, I'm alone in the world, some fucker went and left me with no family at all, do you think there's possibly something you can do for me? And I guess I gave it a shot, eventually, and I guess we got _something_ done, but you have to admit, it was never enough. There was still Benny, still alone in the crowd.

Well, here it is, Fraser. I'm giving you this. This girl is your goddamn _family_, and I know that scares the shit out of you, but don't you dare, don't you even think about saying no. You two need each other worse than either of you know. She's six years old, Benny; what's your excuse?

"You've been a father to her for months," he says, his voice rough and soft and deep as he stares down at the wood slats under his feet.

"I'm not her father." I wonder now if I ever will be -- not Grace's father, but someone's. Whatever happens, Stella won't be having children, so I'm in this weird position of praying to God that I'll never be anyone's father, because that'll mean I'm someone else's husband, too, and Christ, I don't want that, don't want to be anywhere but here with her.

"I can't, Ray."

I don't know whether to laugh or hit him. "Well, you already did, Benny."

"Are you _sure_ I'm-"

"I'm positive." No one could miss those eyes. They're his eyes, and I knew it the second I saw her, the second she looked me up and down, storing everything away in her memory. "But if you don't believe me, you could always take a blood test."

I watch him inch closer and closer to the door, appalled and curious. Wanting to get another look at her, wanting a little space to start flagellating himself for the past again. Fraser doesn't change, not easily. He doesn't roll with the punches, and he doesn't make room in his life for those little things that can raise you up and bring you down just as fast, like sickness and love and kids.  This runs against the grain; what I'm asking him to do is everything that Benton Fraser is _not_.

Which is why I'm asking it. Because there's always a moment, in every fairy tale, where the hundred years comes to an end, and there's a kiss, and your eyes open once and for all. He was my kiss. Gracie's going to be his; I just know it.

He opens the door, and there's Grace's voice, rapid and sweet and even, and everything about her, from her gravity to her sadness to her literal mind to her relentless attention to detail, it all just screams _Benny_ to me. Living with her these past months has been just like having him back -- like having a Benny that I can give something back to, one who needs what I've got. I tell people that I saved her, but truthfully, I think she's the one doing the saving. Benny's little girl to the bone. "No," she explains, earnestly, "the school is a real place, but the train that you take to get there, you can only ride it if you're a wizard. It's between the other trains. Not halfway between -- three-quarters."

Kowalski is down on the floor with her, holding the book in his hand like he's never seen a book before, keen and interested, or maybe just enraptured by Grace, who has, on top of everything else, that no-fail personal magnetism that was bred and born into her father. Stella is still on the couch, watching them, and I wonder if she notices that she's holding her hands up by her mouth, betraying her tension as she monitors them to see if the bond will take. It seems to be, but it's too early in the game to call it. He's still our wild card.

She looks up at Fraser in the doorway, and she smiles once, fleetingly, a little peace offering. I'm standing over his shoulder, so I can't see if he smiles back. "You're from Canada," she says. "And you have a wolf."

"He's...half-wolf, actually."

"Wolves are my favorite." Diefenbaker grunts with pleasure and lets his head loll to the side, the only clue that he's still awake. "I watch Animal Planet. It's the best channel. My mother was from Alaska -- that's near Canada."

It's innocently meant, but it's like a little bomb set off in the room; Benny almost plows me over jumping away from her, Stella leans back like she's suddenly exhausted, and the change in Ray Kowalski is elemental. He rises up out of his crouch, pulling in all the tendrils of connection that he was putting out to Grace, and when he turns around he has his game face on; he fixes onto Fraser and me both like we're in the interrogation room, and I get a clear glimpse of what kind of a cop he used to be. "You. Son. Of a bitch," he says, and I have no idea which of us he's talking to. "You!" he repeats, and he's pointing right at me.

"Grace, help me in the kitchen, please," Stella says, clipped and disapproving, and Grace goes without complaint. She's used to taking orders; whatever Victoria did to that kid's head, we try not to take advantage of it now, but there are still emergency situations where it comes in handy.

"Now, Stanley--" Fraser begins, placatingly.

"Fraser, shut up, okay? You, I can deal with. I _know_ why you did what you did. What I cannot figure out is _you_, Vecchio. You knew that woman, and you know that she never did anything good for anybody--"

"Stanley...."

"--she never brought anything good into the world--"

"Stanley...."

"--and you bring her kid into Stella's house? What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"Stanley!"

"_What_, Fraser?"

"My. She's my. I'm...."

Ray rolls his eyes. "Well, no shit you're the father."

"You knew?"

"I been looking at those eyes every day for the last six years, Fraser. I'm in love with your fucking pretty blue eyes-- you think I don't know them when I see them?" Yeah. It really is the eyes. "I knew you were the father before I knew who her goddamn mother was."

"I would've told you, Stanley. If there had been anybody else."

"Well, color me in denial, then."

Benny sits down in the closest chair, and I'd forgotten what a hell of a thing it is to see a strong man brought down. I don't know if it's the ghost of Victoria Metcalf, or the intensity of being someone's _father_, hearing that word and knowing it's all him, or maybe the guilt of knowing that now he's hurt yet another partner with that crazy week all those years ago. Whatever, he looks like a hologram of himself, insubstantial and fragile, and as a cop and while I was undercover, I had lots of reasons and lots of tricks for tearing apart a hard guy, but in his own deceptively gentle way, Benny was the hardest of them all.  Shit, he was tougher blind and legless than most people ever are. None of my tricks ever worked on him -- just the things I did by accident.

It's hell for me to watch him reduced to this, but what the fuck can I do about it? I'm a continent away from him now, and now I always will be. Because of who he is, because of who I am. Because of the way he loved me open-handed, because of the way I loved him, back-handed. For the first time, I'm not just resigned to the fact of Ray Kowalski, but grateful for him, because he can move in where I never could.

He steps in between Fraser's legs, and Fraser leans toward him with pure desperation in the taut lines of that strong body. He wraps his arms around his lover and rests his forehead on Kowalski's solar plexus, and Kowalski puts his hands on Fraser's hair. "I'm sorry, Stanley. Oh, God. I'm so sorry to do this to you."

"You didn't do it to _me_, Frase. It was a long time ago."

"No, I mean...now. Today. We have to...I. Have to. Bring her with us.  Home with us."

Tick tock. Tick tock. I watch Kowalski catch on. I watch him go through surprise and into confusion. He looks up and meets my eyes, and I don't give him anything. Show's not up here; it's there with Fraser.

We always knew it might come down to this. Stella told me he'd be the swing vote, and he could go either way. I wait for it. What else can I do?

"No," he says simply.

Shit.

"I'm not gonna let you, Frase. I'm not gonna let you live under this for the rest of your life."

"But I can't...I have a responsibility."

"Because you knocked her up? No. That's _not_ your responsibility. All your mistakes were about you not cutting the strings, about you thinking you had this -- this -- _responsibility_ when it comes to her. You do not, Fraser. You never did. Not for her felonies, not for her jail time, not for her psychosis, not for her kid, and not for her, wherever the hell she is now."

"She's dead. She's dead."

That stops him for a beat, and his hand makes a gentling circle in Fraser's hair. "And because you couldn't get out, you were almost dead. You never could get out on your own, Fraser. This time I'm not going to give you a choice. She cannot have you back, you get that? I'm not having you go every day of your life -- fucking _thinking_ about her, obsessing about shit that went down seven years ago.  It's time for you to _get out_, for good this time. Or she'll have you around the throat until the day you die."

"I spent so many years...trying to keep that part of my life from touching you. What I did to Ray -- I'll regret it forever. No words can ever make it right. And now I'm asking you to put everything we have aside to help me with this, and it's so wrong, Stanley. You deserve so much better than this."

Enough. Enough of this. "Kowalski. I wanna see you outside."

He thinks about telling me to screw off, but the truth is that underneath the bluster, there's a guy in there who's got every bit the fetish for fairness that Benny does; it's why they move together the way they do, why they slid into each other's lives like they did.

But I didn't count on loyalty tripping this thing up. Time to give New Ray something else to think about.

Porch, take two. However much alike they are on the inside, Ray and Benny couldn't carry themselves any more differently; instead of Benny's firing-squad pose, Kowalski puts his elbows on the railing and leans backwards. It's an ostentatiously vulnerable position, wide-open, like he's saying "I'm so in control here that you can hit me with whatever you got." So let's hit it.

I step right up to him, closer than the rules of the game allow, until I feel him tense up in spite of himself, and I put a hand on his shoulder. His eyes narrow, but he's gonna play chicken with me, and he doesn't want to be the first to make a sound.

"I get what you're saying, _Stanley_. I really do."

"Don't call me that."

I raise my eyebrows. "Thought that was your new and improved name."

"You're not Fraser."

"So few are."

"Just the one."

"Just the two."

He doesn't like that thought; funny how what was like a literal God-send to me can be such a threat to Kowalski. Two Frasers -- one to save you and one to save. "There's no way I'm going to let you saddle him with this, Vecchio. You better call in your backup plan."

"I don't have a backup plan." He snorts his disbelief, and reluctantly I have to admire his instincts. I've already talked to Tony and Maria. But that's an emergency fallback position, and I'm not at rock-bottom yet. "It's all on the two of you."

"You know, I don't get you, Vecchio. I mean, you of all people -- you should hate her. You should get where I'm coming from."

"Hey, I got what I wanted. She swung for what she did to Fraser. But it's you I don't get -- blaming that little girl for, what, being born? For disrupting your life with her existence? That's low, Stanley."

He squirms under that, but he's a stubborn bastard. "I'm not sharing him."

"With his own daughter?"

"With Victoria! All bullshit aside, Vecchio, you know better than anyone that he's got no limits when it comes to her. There's no telling how far this could go if it gets started again."

"You seeing ghosts, Kowalski?"

"I got a right to be. You wanna be roses and rainbows about this, you go right on ahead. I'm the one who looks at the goddamn bullet hole you put in him every night. It's on me to make sure it never comes to that again."

It's not that I think he doesn't have a point. I can see where he's coming from. But on the other hand, I've got things on me, too. It was me he came to back in another lifetime, when he thought he was totally alone in the world. It's been a hell of a ride, but finally, I've got something for him. Finally, the answer to "Can you?" is "Yes."

And Ray Kowalski -- _Stanley_ Kowalski -- may think he's appointed by the angels to heal Fraser's every wound, but this goes back to way before him. This is mine to do, giving Benny back his family. This is the thing he and I set in motion almost a decade ago.

"Let me bottom-line this for you. We're going to make it short and sweet." I step even closer, chest to chest, taking full advantage of the hair's worth of height I have on him. "Where I come from, blood still counts for something, and as far as I'm concerned, that girl belongs with her father. You don't like that, fine. That's your right. But coming between a little kid and her father, well, that just ain't right. And it's not going down on my time."

"Since when did it become _your_ time? Who the fuck are you, anyway? Ancient history, Vecchio. That's all."

"You want to know who I am? You really want to know?"

He doesn't blink. He's got a hell of a game face, the former Detective Kowalski. "Yeah. Tell me who you are to us."

"I'm Armando fucking Langoustini. I was under deep cover with the Mafia for over a year, and on the day your idiot boyfriend blew my cover, my rep as the man who'd kill you for parking in his space was solid as a fucking rock. Now, do you honestly think that happens by accident? Do you think I _bluffed_ my way through thirteen months and twelve days as the Bookman? You want to play with me, Kowalski, that's your prerogative. But this is the only warning you get, and you just get it because I like you: I've got games you never even heard of. You keep on fucking with my friend and his family, and Stanley, I don't give a shit how pure your intentions are. I'll put you on the goddamn bench."

"You're _threatening_ me?"

"No, Stanley. I'm doing what I think is best for Benny, just like you are.  I'm just saying -- when push comes to shove, I think I'm willing to take it farther than you are. If you think I'm wrong, you're welcome to try me. We'll play it out. I really do like you, Kowalski. But I owe Grace and I owe Benny, and you are only as much in my way as you want to be. Does that lay it all out for you pretty well?"

He doesn't like being out-faced. Who does, really? I see him twitch to take a swing at me, but on the other hand.... On the other hand for all that he was one of Chicago's finest, Ray Kowalski is 99.44% pure. Like Fraser, there's a core of decency to him that's untouchable, incorruptible. And he's looking in my eyes now, and for the first time, it's sinking in on him that I never had that kind of core. I'm a good man; I believe that I am, but I came to that over a lot of years and a lot of terrain. I'm a different sort of animal from the two of them, and if I've regretted that from time to time, I can also use it to my advantage. A man needs to hang onto his advantages.

"Yeah," he says gruffly. "Yeah. We got a wavelength thing going here."

"Good." I pat his chest lightly, and step away. "Trust me, you'll be thanking me in a month. She's a good kid." I flash for a second on Stella's faraway eyes; she said _If he'll give it a chance...he'd make a good father.  No one better. _ And I was jealous as hell when she said it, even though Ray's as far removed from her life as good old Vicky is from Fraser's now. So, yeah, I know where he's coming from. Maybe we're not such different animals after all. Maybe in spite of his innocence and my opportunism, we both understand that every fire leaves its ashes.

When we open the door, she is standing by his knee, and I see Kowalski's breath freeze for a moment, his whole body going perfectly still. It's even a little bit of a shock for me, watching them like that, nearly touching, regarding each other deeply with matched looks of doubt and wonder. Then they both turn to look at us, and Kowalski rubs his eyes. It's a lot of Fraser to take all at once.  He puts his hands down, absently pushing leather bracelets further up on his arm. Any married couple can argue with their eyes, but as I watch Ray and Benny, I realize that not every couple can promise each other the world and their lives and their perfect trust in a silent split second. Just the good ones.

Benny turns back to his daughter, and he talks to her just like he would to any woman, patient and respectful. "Grace. Stanley and I would like you to come to Canada with us."

She looks at him, pondering. "What about Ray and Stella?"

He bites his lip, the desire to protect her warring with Fraser's basic honesty. "Stella needs to rest for a while. She's very sick."

"Are there bears?"

"In Canada? Yes. Some bears."

"What should I call you?"

I let out a long breath of relief, because now we're just into the semantics. 

Doesn't really matter what she calls him. He'll be a father to her for the duration, even if both of them spend years being too stubborn to call it what it is. "My...name is Benton," he says, and I'm grinning from ear to ear. Stubborn moose. Benny, Benny, Benny. You'll thank me, too, my friend. All the things you did for me, all the things I could never do for you -- it all brought us to this.

"There's a bear on television named Ben."

"Ben," he says, and I can tell from the very blankness of his face how deep the feeling runs, like a river under the ice. "Does that mean you want to come with us?"

"Can I visit Alaska?"

"Yes," he says instantly, and then looks quickly at Kowalski, who rolls his eyes and nods.

And if I manipulated Benny into this, I don't regret it. If I had to hit a little below the belt to get Kowalski to take my word for rightness of it, I don't regret it. Certain things can raise you up and bring you low at the same time, like sickness and love and children. I learned that here, from this family, my Stella and my Grace. And the flying and the falling are all part of the same, and it's all worth it. Everything is worth it, even the little things, even the painful things. I learned that from him. My Benny.


	3. The Steadfast Tin Soldier

I stop when I hear her voice, right outside the door of her room. I don't know why I'm stopping, except maybe that she can be so quiet, and I always like to let her keep talking without getting in the middle once she's on a roll.

Her voice is heavy from the medication, and it makes her sound older.  Older, and drunk. "--looking for my father?" she's saying, and I take it like a punch. I've been taking those nonstop for almost twenty-four hours now; I can hardly feel them anymore, except that I can.

Fraser. Where the fuck, where the _fuck_ are you?

"He just went to get a cup of coffee, honey," a woman's voice says -- a nurse I don't know. Just starting her shift, probably. "He'll be right back."

"No. That's Stan. He takes care of me. Somebody should be looking for my father. Benton Fraser. RCMP. He's in the field."

I want to go. More than anything, I want to take one of the dogs and fucking go out there after him myself. I know I could find him. I know I'd just...go right to him. I always could, even though Fraser says it's the other dogs in the team who can track Dief's scent. Bullshit; it's me. It's me who can find Fraser, anytime, anywhere in the Yukon. I'm itching, tapping, rattling apart with the energy of wanting to get out of this hospital, wanting to quit waiting and start bringing him back here.

I want to go, but I can't. I can't because of Grace. Because I take care of her.

"Kowalski." I turn around, and there's Inspector Schiller, and some guy.  Schiller wears the red uniform, even more religiously than Fraser does; she's old-school, like him, only she's got an excuse because she's old, his dad's generation. She's thin and mean-looking, a real battle-axe, but I know Donna Schiller, and that's not the whole story. She's tough but   
she's good, one of the good ones, and she's the kind of friend to me and Fraser that a commanding officer should be -- friend, but not friendly.  Trustworthy, Frase would say.

Where are you, where are you, where are you?

"Kowalski," she says again, a little bit gentler. Enough gentler to get me worried. "This is Mark Sewell. He's a child psychologist."

"Oh, yeah. Right. You're the guy who's gonna rake her over the coals until she says I been beating her or something." Hey, if he wants to catch me off-balance, so sorry. We always knew this could happen; we planned for it, went over it a million times together. Fraser and me both, we've been in police work long enough to know that innocence is no excuse when the   
government gets involved. I can handle this. Even by myself, I can handle it.

Where are you where are you where are you?

"Mr. Kowalski, there's no reason to be nervous."

"I'm not nervous."

Mark Sewell doesn't seem to like that completely; his eyes narrow so fast that most people wouldn't even notice, but I do. He's a nice-looking young guy, but too slicked-down and buttoned-up by half. Gotta wonder what the hell he's doing in Tuktoyuktuk; he's got a Vancouver look to him. "We routinely investigate accidents of this nature, especially when there are   
custody issues with the child. It's mostly just procedure."

"There aren't any custody issues."

"Please, let's sit down." I look up at Schiller, and she doesn't seem any happier than I am, but what's she going to do? She fades discreetly away while I step away from the door and across the hall to a bench. I lean my arms on my thighs and stare down hard into my coffee cup. I already hate this guy, even more now that I've actually met him.

"There aren't custody issues," I tell him again. "Kid lives with her father; what's your issue with that?"

"Constable Fraser."

"Yeah, that's right."

"And where is he?"

Wish I knew. "He's working. He covers a lot of ground when he's working.  He's gonna be here, as soon as he can." Assuming they can get through to him by radio, which assumes that he's not in the middle of some goddamn manhunt, because if he is, he wouldn't notice a nuclear blast, let alone a heads-up from Tuktoyuktuk. That's just how he is. You gotta love it, or you'd kill him.

"And how often is he gone?"

Too often. Too often, and every time I try to tell him that, I trip up on things like he's tired or he's hurt or he's so damn happy to be back home that I can't pick a fight with him or he's giving me that look and he's getting ready to kiss me. And I haven't told him that it's too much, that he has to cut back, because that's the one thing me and Fraser never did to each other. We never got between each other and the job. "Not during the winter," I hedge. "Just...depends on the weather."

Mark Sewell nods like that means something, when I specifically made it up _not_ to mean anything, and I hate him even more. He writes something down. "You are Grace Metcalf's guardian in Constable Fraser's absence."

"I take care of her." I read to her and check her homework, even though she practically knows more than I do already, it feels like. I take her grocery shopping, even though she and I take turns cooking -- she makes a mean minestrone soup, that kid. I taught her how to hitch a sled, and it was just her and me there when Sorcha had her pups, and we stayed up all night just watching them and drinking hot chocolate and talking about dogs and my mom and Animal Planet, and I called her in sick to school the next day so she could get some sleep. Pretty fucking irresponsible, huh? Best night of my life, too.

"And what exactly is your relationship to Grace?"

I lean back against the wall. Doesn't matter how many times Fraser and I went over it, I don't feel ready for it now. I feel like grabbing Mark Sewell by the back of his thick hair and smashing his head against the white hospital wall for thinking what he's thinking, for thinking about me and Frase and Gracie at all. Why can't they all just leave us the hell alone? "I'm her father's partner."

"You're not with the RCMP, are you?"

"No, I'm an American. I came to the Yukon on the trail of Fraser's mom's killer, and for reasons that I don't think I have to fucking justify to you, I remained as a liaison to the Mounties. I've been doing field work with Fraser for eight years."

If my little temper fit pisses him off, he's getting his legs under him now, and he doesn't show it on his face at all. "But not anymore."

No. Not anymore.

"Well, someone's got to stay with Grace, don't they?"

He nods, pretending to look pleased with my level-headed adult-type perspective, and writes more stuff down. "How long has Constable Fraser had sole custody of Grace?"

"Fifteen months." Finally, an easy question, one where I don't have to worry what he's going to make out of the answer. Fifteen months, boom.  Open and shut.

"And before that, he had no contact with her at all?"

Okay, so you can make something out of _anything_, I guess. "Before that, he didn't even know she existed. Her psycho fugitive mother didn't bother to keep him posted."

"So his relationship with Grace's mother was--"

"There was no relationship."

"Well, his--"

"No, no well. No relationship. He barely knew her. She tried to set him up as the fall guy for her diamond heist, and it involved getting in his pants, okay? She got away. He never saw her again. A buddy in Florida found out about Grace after her mom died, and he called Fraser."

"Well--"

"Enough with the fucking well," I growl. "You came here to talk about Grace, you talk about Grace. I'll talk about her dad, I'll talk about me, I'll tell you whatever, but I didn't know her mom and it doesn't matter anyway, because she's dead. New question."

He looks at me, hard, and I realized that I protesteth too much, like Fraser would say. Great, now he's gonna be on Victoria like red on a Mountie. "You think Ms. Metcalf was an unstable parent."

I snort. "Yeah. I think so. Like I said, I never knew the lady, but she had this way of stealing things and shooting people. So I'm guessing. But -- wait, but hey, you're not gonna talk about her to Grace, are you?"

"My interview with Grace will be confidential, of course."

"Look, give the kid a break; she doesn't need that." Shit shit shit, what have I done, I've set him right on the scent of everything I shoulda been keeping him away from. I laid down the law early on, and me and Fraser both stuck to it like bubblegum to a shoe: just Gracie, nobody else -- Gracie can talk about her if she feels like it, but nobody the fuck else, not unless she brings it up. In my house, as much as I can make it that way, Victoria Metcalf never existed. It's what you call a safe zone, for all of us. Olly olly oxen free. And we may not be in my house, but she's my kid, and I don't want this officious asshole sweeping in here in the name of the Queen or whatever and asking her a bunch of questions about what was it like to live with Victoria. Jesus Hopping Christ, can't he see how not right that is? Doesn't he _care_? "The point is," I say, and Christ, I'm desperate now, "you want to know how things are _now_, right? If we're taking care of her okay?"

"I want to know how Grace is, yes. But if her early experiences lead her to need extra assistance in order to undo some type of psychological trauma--"

"She's not traumatized. I mean, she's a good kid. She does good in school--"

"I'm sure she does, Mr. Kowalski."

"Hey, don't patronize me, okay? I know there's more important things than grades, but I'm trying to tell you, we don't need you here. She had an _accident_. She wasn't even at home, she was at a friend's house, so you know I had nothing to do with it. Fraser's her dad, he's her only relative, and you got no business stirring up the waters now that she's settled in here with him."

"Are you Constable Fraser's lover?"

In my head, I can hear Fraser's voice, saying, _Well, we won't have a choice, Stanley. We'll simply have to tell the truth and assume that any reasonable person will understand the situation the way we do._

And the thing isn't that I'm scared, because I know our rights, and I know that without an actual person to sue us for custody, the chances that the government will want to take her just for the hell of it are virtually nil, especially here in Canada, where the laws are a little sweeter than back home to people like us. And it isn't that I'm ashamed, because I'm so far past caring what guys like Mark Sewell think about anything; once you live through your first couple of blizzards and a rock fall for good measure, just you and your partner and your sled in a hundred thousand square miles of nothing but white Northwest, it's just not important anymore what anyone else thinks.

I look him in the eye, and I have every reason to tell the truth, up to and including it's what Fraser would do if he were here, but I don't say anything. I just stare at him.

Because I won't -- I Will Not -- agree to imply that he has a right to it.  He's nothing, he's nobody. He's got a job to do, and I guess I respect that, but I don't think his job involves crawling into bed with me and Fraser. That's mine. That's my adventure, and my shelter from the blizzard, and what makes my little world go round, and fuck him if he thinks I'm giving it to him to write down for his files. I just keep looking at him, until he starts to fidget and look away.

Damn right.

"Excuse me...Mr. Kowalski?" It's the nurse, coming out of her room, and I jump to my feet, not caring about the slosh of the coffee. "Do you have a moment? Grace is asking--"

"I got nothing but time," I tell her, flipping her and Sewell both a little _wanna stop me?_ smile, and I leave him sitting there in the hallway, closing the door between us. Let him wait. Let him wait or go away, whichever, I don't care.

I sit down on the edge of the bed, and Grace closes her eyes and opens them again, just exactly like Fraser does when something hurts but he's telling himself it doesn't. Damn, what am I thinking? Eleven broken bones, and I'm practically jumping up and down on her hospital bed. I'm worse than the dogs sometimes. "Hi, Bright Eyes," I say. "How's, uh, how was the nap?"

"Hi, Stan," she says, and smiles at me. Creepily, it's not Fraser's smile; he never said if it was Victoria's or not, but if it is, if that's where she got that smile from, then...then no wonder he didn't know how to say _no_ when he should have. "Am I -- they won't tell me -- I didn't hurt my spine, did I?"

"Oh -- oh, jeez, no, nothing like that. No, hey, you're going to be just fine, you savvy? We might be hiring someone to come stay with us for a little while, like a nurse, just to help teach you how to do stuff the right way so you don't get worse while you're getting better--"

"A physical therapist?"

Right. Keep forgetting. "Yeah, a physical therapist. But there's nothing wrong with your spine."

"I don't remember what happened," she mumbles, like she's ashamed of that.

"You fell down the stairs at the party."

"I think I was asleep...." Probably she was. She sleepwalks sometimes. I can't believe I didn't warn the mom, didn't tell anyone to watch out for her, I can't believe I flaked out and just didn't think about it, I don't know what I'm going to tell Fraser when he gets here, I don't know how I'm going to be able to take the way he'll forgive me.

"Stan?"

"Yeah?"

"Have you talked to Ben yet?"

"He's...on his way." Somehow I believe it, even though I don't know if it's true, and Grace looks exactly the same way. Like she believes it, whether or not it's true. She sighs a little and closes her eyes, and suddenly I remember the thing that Mark Sewell made me forget for a little while by being such an unlikeable freak.

I remember the thing that I promised myself while she was in surgery, sewing up the things that her broken ribs stabbed through, and I remember what I've been working on ever since. The thing I have to tell Fraser when he gets here, and the thing he _won't_ forgive me for.

Don't think about Fraser. Won't do any good until he gets here; think about Grace. I brush her curly hair back with my palm, wanting just to wipe my hand over her face and make that look go away, that bone-deep sadness that I've seen on his face maybe a dozen times in the last eight years, and on hers that many times or more in the last fifteen months.  That expatriate look. I called it that once to Fraser's face and his jaw almost fell off; I had to sock him in the shoulder and say, I like Hemingway, I'm not just for _decoration_, you know. He kissed me hard and said, I've been aware for some years that you know everything worth knowing, Stanley.

Shit. That man can turn a phrase any which way, but he's Shakespeare with the compliments. I always feel like I should be writing them down -- not that I'm ever in danger of forgetting any of them.

Maybe I should start copying them down. I may need to dip into my back supply here before too long.

"Would you sing to me?"

My heart stops and then jumps up again with a bang. It's weird; it's a surprise. She's asked Fraser for that before, but never me, not any of the nights I've put her to bed. She's heard me sing, with the radio, or stupid old tv jingles to make her laugh, but she's never asked. "Okay," I say, thinking, What the hell am I going to sing? Somehow, I don't think ABBA quite cuts the mustard.

I give a little cough to clear my throat. Where are you, Frase? You on your way, or what?

I remember the first night we got settled into the house here, remember standing in the kitchen next to the champagne in the bucket of ice, and able to hear him saying goodnight to her on the other side of the wall.  She asked him if he would sing, and of course he said he would, and it hit me for the first time, I caught the way the wind was blowing. I remember   
thinking, _He's not my Fraser anymore. He's ours, he's a third of the equation instead of half._ And it felt strange, but good, like it made Fraser smaller but better, like he belonged to me less but I loved him more, and for once in my life I didn't mind waiting, not at all. I remember his voice, through the wall. _'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved. How precious did that grace appear, the hour I first believed...._

Further back, I remember his voice in that moment, that one, incredible smack to the head that had me seeing stars that never went away. I closed my eyes, and I _listened_ to him -- _tracing one more line through a land so wide and savage, to make a Northwest Passage to the sea...._ \-- and I thought, Oh, God, I think I'm in love with Fraser, because this is the world like it was made to be, before this I only knew what to save the world _from_, but this is what you save the world _for_.

Sure can't sing like Fraser can, but hey, she knows that. She just wants to hear a familiar voice, I guess, and she's like her dad: she never wanted me to be anything but _there_. Only wanted me to be all the things I already was.

Still, all sentimentality on the back burner for a minute, I still don't know what to sing. For some reason, out of nowhere, I think about Stella, and her collection of classical CDs, cello music and classical guitar, and her two Nirvana albums stuck in there, the way she'd flush and get defensive when I teased her about her thing for Kurt Cobain, the way I knew that none of her friends knew she even owned them; I was the one who knew it wasn't Yo-Yo Ma she put on the stereo when she stayed up late to soak the stress away in a long bath.

I wonder if Stella's okay. I wonder if it would be okay to call her for no reason. I wonder if I'll ever see her again.

It's not a hymn, but it sort of sounds like one when I sing it -- slower and quieter than good old Kurt ever did. I'm singing it a little like Fraser might, if he were a Nirvana fan -- if he got it kind of mixed up in his head with the Northwest Passage song. "Come as you are...as you were...as I want you to be. As a friend, as a friend, as an old memory...."

Come on, Frase. Come here, my Fraser, come on.

And maybe Kurt somehow got his angel wings after he blew his head off, because when she's asleep again and I slip out the door to see if Mark Sewell still has his ass parked in the hallway, goddamned if they're not both there. Sewell and Fraser, standing down the hall talking quietly, Sewell with his pen going scritch scritch scritch over the page, Fraser with his Stetson tucked under his arm, an almost invisible frown creasing his forehead.

"Hey, Mark!" I call cheerfully. "Fuck off and let the man see his kid, why dontcha?"

They both raise their heads to look at me, and Sewell scowls, probably because of my majorly unpaternal profanity, and Fraser looks at me like I'm his absolute savior, like I'm the finest thing he's seen in weeks.  Well, come to think of it, hopefully I am.

I push aside the thought of how I'm never going to be his savior again after this. Let me just have a minute, just a few more seconds here of happy family reunion, and then I'll tell him. Then I'll do it, swear to God.

He gives Sewell the ultra-polite boot, and then he comes straight to me, only a few of those long-legged strides down the short hallway, and he's hugging me, and Christ, he feels good, the texture of the serge under my arms, the shape of Fraser under the serge, the smell of him everywhere.  "She's okay," I say into his ear. "She's gonna be just fine, Frase, it looks a lot worse than it is."

Fraser bear-hugs me even tighter, then goes where I point him, into Grace's room. Sewell looks smug, like he thinks I was trying to hide something from him and not doing a very good job of it. He doesn't get it; I don't care if he knows the score, but I want _him_ to know that he got it by spying on us, not because I had anything I felt like telling him.  The important thing, though, is that he fucks off, and I can finally sit down for real, alone on that bench in the hall, and I fall asleep practically before my back hits the wall, and I wake up leaning on Fraser's shoulder -- the shirt, not the serge. I reach out instinctively and wrap my fingers around the leather strap of his suspenders, and he leans his cheek over into my hair. "Can you tell me what happened?"

"Yeah. A girl in her class had a birthday party, a -- sleeping bag -- whaddaya call 'em -- slumber party." I don't tell Fraser how surprised I was that Grace got invited; maybe he knows how much time she doesn't spend playing with kids her own age, or maybe he doesn't, but it's just one more thing I was never really sure how to tell him. It would've been so much easier if he'd just been around to notice on his own.... "She walked in her sleep, and she fell -- down this big old two-story spiral staircase."

He takes a deep breath and lets it out calmly. "She must have been...so frightened."

"She doesn't remember it that well."

"That's what she told me, too, but...."

"But nothing. She lies worse than you do, and she likes it about as much.  Trust me, she's not just protecting you." But he's got it in one, he knows that she would try to protect him. From feeling sorry for her, from worrying about her, from her being in his way. Does he know it because it's what he would do? They're so fucking alike. Make me wanna crack their heads together sometimes.

Besides, she was really asleep. I know, because the kid, that girl Olivia came to the hospital with her mom, and she was red-eyed from crying, and her mom poked her in the back and she said she was sorry, very sorry. At first I thought she was just being dragged there as a Canadian emergency courtesy drill, but the story came out piece by piece, and it turns out that most of the other girls were awake. They were watching Grace walk and talk in her sleep, and they thought it was funny, you know, like kids would, just normal kid stuff. They let her do it, and it was too late to stop her when she turned around by the stairs, and anyway, Olivia swore, crying again, they thought she could see the steps, because her eyes were open. They didn't think she would fall.

It was just a dumb accident. I know that; I must've fallen out of or off of or into everything in a seven-mile radius from my house when I was a kid. I felt bad for the girl who had a kid fall twenty feet and practically bleed to death internally at her tenth birthday party. And at the same time, I wanted to throw her down an elevator shaft, prissy little bitch who just laid there in her sleeping bag _laughing at my daughter_ and letting her almost almost fucking _die_ at the slumber party that was supposed to be so normal, such a great thing for Grace.

But Fraser would've been cool about it, very polite, and I did the honors.  It's okay, I told her and her mom. Accidents happen -- you know kids. And then as they were leaving, after I told them they could see Grace in a couple of days, I had to ask, What was she saying?

Olivia looked down at the floor, probably feeling lower than dirt, and probably she should've, too. Just _mamma_, she told me. Just calling _mamma_.  Her own mother looked like she was almost ready to throw _herself_ down the elevator shaft in atonement. I just turned my back, trying not to think of Gracie calling out to her dead mother, and those stupid girls giggling about it. Trying not to think about what must be in Gracie's restless dreams -- Victoria alive, Victoria dead? Was she calling her back, or begging her to get away?

"It was just an accident. I should've told the lady that she does that sometimes." Protecting Fraser. Did she inherit that from him, or did she learn it from me?

I'm leaning up against him, but suddenly I feel as far from him as I've ever been, and I'm suddenly sick with understanding that the clock's run out, and I have to take care of this now and for always. I understand, too, what it means. I'm impulsive, sure, but I can puzzle my way through an implication or two when I have to, when I'm on my own.

I take care of her, I remind myself. I take _care_ of her.

"You should've been here," I tell him, soft but not letting him take a walk on it.

He stiffens, just a tiny bit, the muscle in his shoulder starting to coil up. "I came as soon as I heard."

I sit up straight, sit up to look into his eyes. God, those eyes, my blue-eyed Ben Fraser. "You didn't come fast enough. She needed surgery, Frase. I couldn't sign the release, because I'm not her father. They had to get a bunch of different doctors to sign off on something that said she might _die_ if they didn't get her on the table. Do you get that? Do you get that you left me here to watch them getting together to agree that she was dying?"

He looks pale, under the arctic tan. "What could I -- I did the best I could, Stanley. I dropped everything and--"

Harder. _Meaner_. "No, Frase. You didn't drop everything. You were in the fucking _field_, and I was taking care of your daughter."

"I don't know what you expect me to--"

"Fine, so I'll tell you. I expect you to get a transfer. I expect you to put the sled in a box, farm out the dogs so some younger Mountie can have wacky adventures in the ice fields, and come live with your family."

I can tell he's pissed off, even as hard as he's trying to stay blank. He stands up and takes a few caged steps. "I'm sorry, Stanley. I'm aware of the burden--"

I've never wanted to punch him so badly, not even the time when I did punch him. I settle for aiming a kick at his shins, and he jumps away from it reflexively. "You asshole, don't you ever call her a burden again. I am not asking this so that I won't have to help out as much, okay? I'm asking because she thinks you're fucking Superman, she thinks you're the Prime Minister of heaven and earth, and I'm sick of watching you walk away from her."

That's it. That's it, I've said it. Victoria walked away from her on the end of a rope. Stella and Ray, well, they didn't have much choice, but she liked it there on the beach, and now they're gone, too. And Fraser, he's gone so much it's like life gets put on hold when he _is_ there, it's like vacation, and the only normal life she has is when she and I hang together and wait for him to get back in our lives.

I used to be able to follow him anywhere. Gracie never could. Either way, we're in the same boat now. We're both in love with Benton Fraser, RCMP, and we both wait around for him to be done with everything else before he comes home.

Come as you are, as you were, as I want you to be.

"What sort of example would I set for my child, if I abandoned my duty?"

"What about Chicago, Frase? You were in one place there, and we did plenty of good deeds, don't you remember? You don't have to be scouring the ends of the earth to have a duty."

He shakes his head, fiercely. "No, I -- don't _you_ remember? The times we talked about this around the fire...about how we belonged here, about how it was a calling, something we had to do to be whole?"

Yeah, I remember. I wonder if he's listening to himself; we we we. Yeah, it _was_ our fucking calling. _Ours_. And I walked away from it. It's different when it's me, is that the way it is, Fraser? I can just close my eyes and forget about how it was when you and I went to the edge of the world and back twice a day, about how it made me feel alive like nothing else ever did, nothing else except you? Fuck you, my baby, my Fraser. Fuck you. It hurt like hell to close my eyes, but I did it. I do it every damn day, and so can you.

"_We_ were younger then," I say tightly. "And _you_ didn't have a daughter who needed you."

I can almost see the wheels turning, see him changing directions. He turns back to me, fixing me with those eyes, the earnestness practically pouring off of him. "You're right, Stanley. You're entirely right; we haven't provided for her adequately. We can speak to a lawyer and find out how we can prevent something like this from happening again. If we can't make you a legal guardian, at least power of attorney--"

He doesn't see it. He won't see it. I have to send up a flare, one that I didn't want to use but somehow knew all along that I'd end up having to.  "Fraser. I've talked to my own lawyer."

His forehead creases, puzzled, and he rubs his eyebrow. I'm sorry for this, Frase. You know how bad I loved you, don't you? But you left me the only one who could take care of her, and I have to, I can't do the wrong thing here. "I got a lawyer. And I talked to Maggie Mackenzie. She said she'd--"

"No. No."

"Listen to me, Frase, you don't want to fight this one."

"_No!_ She's _my_ daughter."

"Listen to me! Listen, if Maggie sues you for custody, she will _win_, okay? The judges are gonna like her better because she's a woman, they're gonna like that she's a blood relative, and they're gonna _love_ that she's accepted a job training Mounties in Ottawa. We're talking stable home environment, Fraser; on paper it's gonna look so much better than some -- stranger taking care of her while you're gone months at a time."

He looks almost panicked. I'm gonna throw myself down that elevator shaft when this is all over, I really fucking might. "You can't be asking me simply to accept this."

"I'm just giving you the straight dope, Fraser. If you fight, you'll be dragging Gracie through a bunch of family court bullshit for no reason.  Fraser, for Christ's sake, is this what you _want_? You want her to grow up like you did, a million miles from nowhere with her nose in a book and no mother and a father who--"

"Don't. Don't say a word about my father."

If there's one thing I hate, it's Fraser giving me orders. I bounce up to my feet and hit him in the chest with the side of my hand. "Don't tell me what to do, just because you know I'm right! What the hell good does it do for you to spend half your life brooding about turning into him if you're not going to stop it when you have the chance?"

"Ray. Ray." He only calls me Ray anymore when he's totally cracked, when he can't tell up from down and north from south anymore. Looking back on it, I know I'll feel sorry for him. Looking back, I know I'll be sorry.  But it's like my mom always said -- can you believe she was right? _You'll understand when you have kids of your own._ Understand the things you're   
capable of, understand how hurting someone can be the only right thing to do. I understand, even though I wish I didn't have to. "I can't give up. I can't fail. Don't you see that?"

"I see that you have failed." He takes a step back, like I just shot him.  I'm sorry, Fraser. "I see that kids need _homes_, and you haven't given her one."

"I gave her you," he says softly. "Doesn't that mean anything? Isn't that reason to help me?"

"No. It's reason to help her. I love you, Fraser. I love you. But you're an adult, and she's only nine, and there's no one but me who can do this.  I wish I could help you."

"But you won't."

I meet his eyes, the only honorable thing to do. "No, I won't. I'll testify against you, Frase. I'll tell them you're not fit."

"Why?" His voice breaks; I've never heard him like this, never.

"Because it's true," I whisper, and he turns away, head and shoulders low, broken.

When he walks without looking back at me and shuts me out of Grace's room, I collapse back onto the bench. My hands are shaking when I look at them, and I'm having to pound it into my thick head. Over over over. It's over.  Fraser won't bend, he won't give in when someone asks him to change his course, not even if it's me. He won't take another job. He won't forgive me for making him face the fact that he had a year and a half, and he never twigged to how a guy gets to be a father, he failed the pop quiz because he never fucking studied for it.

The day he left the first time, the first day me and Grace spent alone together...I was scared out of my mind. I was never so scared of anything, in all my life, as I was of having total responsibility for this little, lonely kid I barely knew.

Fear, the way Fraser sees it, is always something to be overcome. I don't think I ever _overcame_ my fear of taking care of Grace. I don't think parents are supposed to. I think you're scared for them forever. I don't know if Fraser -- much as I love him, Christ, much as I _loved_ him -- can hack that.

I did the right thing. I did the right thing. And he'll never forgive me.

I talked to Maggie for hours last night. She's been wanting children anyway; she's been thinking about adoption. At her age, she says, you can't trust the things you really care about to a process as stupid and inane as dating, which made me laugh. Luckiest thing that ever happened to me was that I didn't have to do much dating in my life; the things I really cared about more or less sort of just happened to me, just out of the clear blue sky. Before long, Grace is going to be a teenager, and what the hell business do I have raising a teenage girl? She needs a mother.  She needs someone like Maggie.

It all just seemed to slip into place. It felt right, it made sense. I kept tearing up while we talked about it, but I _knew_ it was right. The one thing bugging me though -- I made a joke out of it, said something like, You're not gonna stick her in a tree and go out wrestling cougars or anything, are you? And that made _her_ laugh, and she said, Oh, God, I loved my parents a lot, but don't you think you have to be -- you know, a little bit _crazy_ to live like they did? Yeah, I said, maybe a little bit. Snow-crazy, or something.

I was snow-crazy once. God, I can't believe how easy it was for him to forget that. I was his partner, once. In _everything_.

When did I turn into the goddamn grownup, you know? And why did it have to happen without him?

I fall asleep again, and Constable Schiffer wakes me up, but I won't talk to her, my brain is still half asleep and I just push her hand off my shoulder and lay down on the bench and wish I could dream about building fires and the Northern Lights and Fraser's blue eyes an inch away from mine while he lays under me, his nose brushing my nose, smiling at me and   
smoothing the blanket across my back. I wish I could dream about being younger, and adventuring. I can almost hear her voice and Fraser's, talking all hushed and hurried, but it's nothing I can focus on.

It's almost like a dream when he helps me to my feet, and I wrap my arms around him and feel him sway me side to side. Something about him smells different, and it's the smell of tears on his face, and I lick the traces of them. Something's heavy against my legs, too, and it breathes like Diefenbaker. Could _be_ Diefenbaker; he always had a way of horning into hospitals where he didn't belong. "Come on," Fraser whispers. "Let's go home."

"Have to wait...." I can't remember what for, though. For...for Fraser, except that he's here now, and.... Wake _up_, _Jesus_, Kowalski.

"Let's go home," he says again, and I give in. Doesn't Fraser always know what to do? Doesn't he _always_?

Why couldn't he always? Why did he have to go and be right for all those years, and then just up and quit?

He drives me home, and I'm waking up, but now that it's really happening, I don't want it to. I follow him inside, but I make him undress me, like I couldn't do it myself, because I just don't want him to make me talk or think; I _could_, I just don't _want_ to.

I lie down and close my eyes and figure he's just going to leave me there, but he lies down with me, with one arm spread over my chest. He kisses me, and I'm plenty awake enough to know that this doesn't jibe with the Fraser who won't ever forgive me for taking his daughter away from him, but I figure maybe I shouldn't clue him in just yet. I figure I should just shut the fuck up and kiss him back.

When he lets my mouth go, like a year or so later, I gasp in and then breathe out, saying, "This isn't about wanting to hurt you, Fraser, I know it has to seem like it, but I swear it's not."

"I know." His fingers trace my cheek and along my jaw, and I can almost hear the crackling sound of his fingers on my stubble in the dead silence.  "My father," he finally whispers, moving his lips against my eyelid, " was patrolling the same terrain when he was sixty-two that he'd patrolled his entire career. I'm forty-four, Stanley. And it gets harder every month.   
I'm so tired. I have to work harder...than I ever did when I had you there to help me. I really don't see how he managed it."

"Fraser," I mumble, "if anyone tells you you're quitting the field because you couldn't live up to Ye Olde Legend of Bob Fraser, you just send them to me and I'll kick them in the head for you, okay?"

"Even if I'm that person?" he asks, with a weird, lost laugh.

This is my last chance, and I know it. I make myself stay still, looking relaxed and unthreatening, but inside it's all systems go, and I know I have one shot at moving the immovable object, at making Benton Fraser bend. "I'll make you a deal, Frase," I offer, sounding mellow. "If I tell you how he did it, will that be enough for you? If you know why it worked for him and it's not gonna work for you, will you agree to come home instead of fucking proving something to yourself?"

He sounds small, so small you could lose him. "Yes," he says. "Yes, if you know, I need you to tell me."

"He just assumed you'd always be okay. He never thought you might not be.  It kept him strong."

Fraser's quiet for a long time, and then he starts to quiver. It's laughter, but there's no sound, and he kisses my face three times. "In my father's day," he says, "the RCMP issued you a stick and a paper bag. If you lost the stick, they charged you for it."

"Yeah, and my old man had to walk uphill both ways to school. Fraser--"  And I'm laughing now, too, laughing with him, "what the hell are you talking about?"

"It's just -- of course. Of course. I was his son. He thought he was invincible. He thought I was, too. He thought I didn't need him, or anyone else."

"Frase. He was wrong."

"Yes, of course he was. Of course, he was terribly, terribly wrong, and very foolish, and I love you, because I think you are invincible, because in all these years, it has never once occurred to me that you need me."

"I do."

"No, you don't. You -- you couldn't have said what you said to me if you weren't willing to lose me."

_Willing_ might be a little strong, but he's got the gist of it, he's on the money. "Are you having a moment of clarity here, Fraser?"

"Yes, Stanley, I think I might be." He kisses me again, deep and deeper, and I want him so bad you'd think I'd never had him before -- I guess because I was counting on never having him again.

I twine my legs around him, and his hips shift so that his hard-on is bumping into my hip; I can feel the heat of it through the fabric of his longjohns. I run my hands down over his hair, and on down his back. "You really should...explain it to me. Later."

"Later," he repeats, huskily, and he holds my chin this time while he kisses me, and I don't think I'll ever get over the way I go crazy for Fraser's strength, no matter how many times I want to hit him and shake him and tell him to quit being so damn strong. "Stanley?" he murmurs, tonguing my ear while one hand works itself underneath me to get a grip on my ass. I make some kind of _hunh?_ sound, and he says, "Is this what is sometimes referred to as 'make-up sex?'"

"Well -- yeah. Yeah, sure it is. Why do you ask, Frase?"

"I just don't recall ever having had make-up sex before."

I give that a little bit of thought -- I mean, just a little bit, but still, it's thought. "Probably because we usually fight in the middle of life-threatening situations. Then we gotta make up to keep from getting killed, and afterwards we've already -- you know, made up, and we're into the thank-God-we're-not-dead sex."

"We have had rather a lot of that over the years." He licks deep into my ear, which makes me shiver, and then he says, in Fraser's I-really-mean-this voice, the only one he can't put on and take off at the drop of a hat, "Thank God we're not dead." I don't know if he's thinking about Grace or about this, about us, but either way -- yeah. Yeah, I'm all over the sentiment.

And Fraser's all over me, and he's doing that purring, humming thing that means he's not only horny, but in a good mood, too -- playful. "I'm looking forward to make-up sex."

"Yeah?" is all the comeback I'm managing. The longjohns normally feel nice and smooth, but when I'm turned on like this and it's my dick humping against them, the cloth scratches, practically gouges -- but in a way that turns the dial even higher.

"You've taught me the virtues of being willing to try anything once," Fraser says, in that silky, sexy voice, that playing voice.

I can't help laughing, though. "Are you ever in good hands, my friend, because I am the _king_ of make-up sex. I owe at least four years of my eleven-year marriage to make-up sex."

He rolls us both over -- strong, strong, so fucking sexy -- until I'm straddling him, burying my fingers in his hair, looking down at his blue eyes in the early morning light. "Teach me," he says, and for once, I don't have a problem with taking Fraser's orders.

It's weird to be doing it like this, with Fraser all stretched out and just looking at me like that, because usually with Frase there's two settings: there's work-mode, the one where things get done, and there's jump-mode, where he comes at me, all alpha-wolf and let-me-taste-you and he barely lets me catch my breath, which is okay, because breath is more fun to chase than it is to catch. But this is different. It's not that he's not into it, because he definitely is -- I can see it in his face, and that's not the only place I can see it, either. This must be make-up-sex Fraser. So pleased to meet you.

I start ripping the buttons on his underwear open as fast as I can, pop pop pop, until it's open and there's a wide strip of nothing but Fraser from throat to groin. I lean my weight back a little on his thighs, and I just take a good, long look, because damn. _Damn._ The man's forty-four years old and I swear he gets better-looking every year, filling out and getting thicker with something that's not bulky like muscle or squishy like fat. I let my hands run all over his chest and down his stomach, and I can see his dick jump when it sees me coming that way. There's just so _much_ Fraser, everywhere you look. It's just...goddamn _delightful_, as Fraser might say himself. Only without the "goddamn," I guess.

My plan is to suck him off -- I know it's not creative, but who the hell cares? It makes him come like crazy, and I have this _thing_ for Fraser's cock, I swear I'd have some part of my body up on it at all times if that weren't impossible, and kind of a weird idea if you start thinking about it really literally, which, like my partner Fraser is usually the first to tell people, I don't have what you call a literal mind. He says it's my poetic soul. Whatever, I just have a thing for Fraser's cock.

As I get down there, though, and I do a few slurps at it to let him know what he's in for, I start thinking bigger. I've got this shiny new Fraser, spread out for me, squirming every time I brush him with my fingers, little thrills going off like bottle rockets in his eyes, and I want to make him forget his name, I want to make him forget everything but what a fantastic idea it was to let me do whatever I wanted to him.

He whimpers as I finger his balls, because of that itself, or because he knows now what I'm doing, getting in behind them to bite the smooth skin there. "Ray," he groans, so I know his compass needle is spinning all to hell already, and my mouth is otherwise occupied, but somehow I half-believe he can hear me chanting in my head at him, thinking _I'm all over you, baby, I'm everywhere you are, I own you, I'm keeping you, I'm never letting you go._

I slide my tongue back and forth through the crack of his ass, over his hole and right on past, just stroking for the sake of stroking. Fraser isn't like I am about taking it up the ass; he's never come just from that, and he'd never say something so ungentlemanly, but I know when he does it he does it mainly for me, and he pretty well counts on being paid back later on; that fair streak of Fraser's, that cuts both ways. But my tongue is another ballgame, a brand new bag, or maybe it's that Fraser's big hotspot is right there around the opening, instead of deep on in like mine. Either way, he pants like a dog when I lick him there, make my tongue as stiff as I can and flick it back and forth, fast and wet. He damn near barks.

I'm so into it, into the feel of his legs shifting restlessly around me and the quick rush of air I can feel over my head as Fraser's pumping his cock where I can't quite see it from my angle, that I might just keep going until my neck commits suicide (I'm going to pay for this with a neck so sore we're gonna need _two_ physical therapists in the house), but suddenly he yells out, practically roars, which is another pretty rare thing, because usually when Fraser's naked his mouth is full of _something_, but right now I'm too far away and he's making these terrific noises that I can feel vibrating way down in his stomach, too out-of-it even to be words. I have to sit up, I have to see him like this.

The best, the best, Fraser is the best thing ever, gorgeous from the heart on out, every piece of sweaty skin, every mussed-up patch of hair, every muscle as it clenches and releases, every word of the poem his eyes are writing on my face. I brace myself up where I can see him, and I tell him that I love him as I fit my dick up against his, and I get a smile from him that's worth filing away in my memory with all the other nice things he's ever said to me. He's slippery down there, and I can feel his pre-come cooling slightly in the air as his cock pulses with blood and gets even hotter, and then he wraps his hand almost all the way around both of us and pulls, and I'm the one yelling, and he's the one teaching.  Sure, he's not teaching me anything I didn't already know, but some lessons bear repeating.

I fall down after I come, and he grunts and then comes, too, getting it all over my chest. There's nothing to do but kiss him, soft and sleepy, lingering there for, the way I plan it, anyway, at least a minute for every day he's been gone between now and the last time I came in his hand.  That's -- maybe, like sixteen or seven-- aw, screw it. That's a good, long kiss, and it's over when I say it's over.

"I am afraid," he admits as we're lying there in our bed.

"Good. You should be."

"I'm afraid of letting her down."

"Good. You might."

"I'm afraid she'll grow up...angry with me."

"'S been known to happen."

"I'm afraid that if I do stay, I won't know what to say to her. That I won't be a good father even if I am here. I see the two of you together, and it's like nothing I've ever witnessed. I'm afraid I can't live up to you, and she'll never be close to me the way she is to you."

I never thought of that one, never in my wildest dreams. Trust Fraser to come up with a fear that crazy. Not live up to _me_? Not live up to me....  I dig my fingers into the muscles in his shoulder, creating the good pain of the best massages, just for a second. "You can't control people.  They're gonna think what they're gonna think."

"I'm afraid to die like he did. With nothing but unfinished business and debts to be repaid. I'm afraid to burden her with all the things I inherited from him."

"Live by the sword, die by the sword, Frase."

"I'm afraid that I'll have nothing at all to pass on to her if I'm...."

"Normal?" I finish, feeling just a little smug, because it's like Fraser's just getting this for the first time, and I've known this about him forever. This is Fraser 101, here, and the short bus just pulled in.  "How could I have become this way?" he demands, plaintively, and I have to laugh.

"Fraser, you're her _dad_. That's how you became this way. You're _worried_ about her. That makes you ready for this. It makes you _sane_, you goofball." I know, I know. What were the chances?

He mulls that over a little while, his fingertips circling my nipple gently. "Are you--?"

"All the time." And I don't know how to say it without sounding like a goober, but it's like being complete for the first time, having Grace to go out of my head worrying about, and Fraser to be rock-solid sure of, never a doubt, my steadfast, my partner, Benton Fraser, RCMP. It's like having your cake and eating it, and then getting to be the Holy Roman Emperor of Cake, too.

Maybe I sleep and maybe I don't, but the clock says it's been over an hour before he says anything again. "Ottawa or Chicago?" 

"Hnrh?"

"You were right -- about the, ah, the woman problem."

"And here I thought my woman problems were over," I yawn into his shoulder.

"I could find a position in Ottawa. Grace liked Maggie, didn't she?"

"Yeah, I think so." Actually, back when they met, Grace was still pretty scared of everyone, but it'll do as a jumping-off point, I think. "Where does Chicago come from?"

"I believe the original name meant 'Place of Wild Onions' in--"

I needle him sharply in the ribs with two fingers. "Freak. Quit playing with me; I'm too tired to keep up with you." I'm _always_ too something to keep up with him, but Fraser's too nice to mention that.

He takes the serious track then, saying, "Chicago is from...from my gratitude. I know, it wasn't a burden, but -- you changed your life for my daughter's sake, much more than I ever did. Much more than I had a right to ask you to do."

I almost blow it off, do the gallant thing and go, happy to do it, Fraser, buddy, but somehow I end up saying, "Did you miss me? You never even fucking said you missed me."

"I missed you," he whispers. "Every day and every night. Those six years...Stanley...."

"Yeah. I know." I do know. I was there; I felt the way he felt then, and I feel the way he feels now that it's over for good. "You gotta give this nuclear family thing a fair shake, though, Frase. I'm telling you. It's pretty damn good."

"It will be. I know. But you -- if you want to go back...."

"Think they'd take you on at the Consulate again?"

"I'm not concerned about it. The worst that could happen is...you'd be having the adventures for a bit, and I'd be--"

"Waiting around for me," I say, half snarky and half thinking it sounds kinda good.

"Well...I might -- occasionally -- advise."

"Advise."

"Advise. If that would suit--"

I lean up and I kiss him. "Suits, suits. You know I'm in love with your goddamn fucking advice, don't you?"

"I was told it was my 'pretty blue eyes.'"

It's the whole package, but you gotta save something for Valentine's Day, right? "Did this have something to do with Maggie, and I'm just missing it?"

He lowers his eyes in that way he does when he's trying to be humble and submissive and shit. "Actually...Francesca--"

I roll my eyes, but to be totally honest, it doesn't sound like a half-bad idea. I think if you combine Franny and Fraser, you get just about one semi-sane woman, which is what we're trying to churn out here, after all. But I just say, "Yeah, Franny will flip for the free babysitting service."

"Oh, I'm sure Francesca would be happy to pay the going rate for babysitting--"

I'm not listening to him anymore. I'm thinking about Chicago, and my badge and my gun, and a big apartment with other kids for Grace to play with, and teaching her how to ride the metro and how Chinese food is really _supposed_ to taste, and lying in bed with Fraser and hearing sirens and motorcycle engines out the window. Maybe we'll send Mark Sewell a   
postcard.

Out our window, I can see the tundra. Six years. God, they were good. The two of us, invincible, flying across the toughest place on earth, getting better and stronger every time.

Hell, we came north with just two of us, and we did everything right. We can go south with three, and we can make it work. That's the kind of thing you just believe, even though you can't know that it's true.


End file.
